Реферат Language World Picture and National-Cultural Specificities in Oral and Written Text
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Language World Picture and National-Cultural Specificities in Oral and Written Text
Contents
Introduction
1. Language as a Mirror of the World…………………………………………..
1.1. Different points of view on the term “Language World Picture”……….
1.2. Language and Culture: problems of interaction………………………..
1.3. Folklore as the most important and well-acclaimed component of the cultural heritage of the nation……………………………………………………….
1.3.1. Expression of folklore in Oral and Written forms of Text …………
2. Reflection of the Language World Picture and National-Cultural Specificities in Oral and Written forms of texts………………......................................................
2.1. Comparative analysis of Language World Pictures and National-Cultural Specificities in Written and Oral forms of Text…………………............................
2.2. Determination of Russian and Kazakh World Picture through the conceptual analysis of Folklore (Folktales and Folksongs)…………………………
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...............
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………....
Introduction
The theme of the research is language units, which function in written and oral texts and create language world picture.
The problem of conceptualization of national world picture with the help of other language cultures attracts interests of many linguists, philologists, philosophers and anthropologies. Necessity to establish the concept of “language world picture” in literary language can be explained by the necessity to understand the situation of polyvariance existing in this sphere. Moreover, the concept of World Picture can be determined in 2 ways: by the description of inner society and with the help foreign observers. Actuality of research, represented in works of many linguists, connected with the lack of scientific description of language units which expresses the national specificity of nations. Another point of the work is the correlation of Language and Culture. The relationship between language and culture may be viewed from two opposite angles: On the one hand language may be seen as closely associated with a culture: language and culture are seen as inseparable phenomena. On the other hand language may be seen as an instrument of communication that may be used with any subject and anywhere in the world: language and culture are seen as separated phenomena. None of these positions is satisfying. The first one emphasizes that language is culture-bound, and one is not far from a conception of a closed universe of language, culture, history and mentality – a national romanticism that is misleading in the light of international and transnational processes in the (late-) modern world. The other one claims that language is culturally neutral; language is seen as a code, and one is not far from a reconstitution of the classical structuralism conception of the autonomy of language.
Topicality of the thesis is determined by the necessity to illuminate problems of conceptualization of national characteristics, which can help to reveal the peculiarities in World Picture of different cultures, through their analysis in oral and written forms of text.
The aim of the research work is to reveal the many aspect investigation of language of literary and oral texts, determination of concepts, which represent the connection of different cultures, detection of lexical facilities, which forms and describes Language Picture of the World.
In compliance with set aims following tasks are considered:
-to analyze cultural and national specificity of language world picture;
-to reveal the essential characteristics and peculiarities of ratio between “concept” and “meaning”;
-to examine language as a mirror of social life in the concept of cross-cultural communication.
-to reveal the peculiarities of Russian and Kazakh language world pictures
The novelty of our research work is determined by the formulated goals and aims which directed to reveal the aspects of conceptualization of national cultural world picture from the lingvocultural points of view.
Theoretical significance of our research is concluded from the investigation and systematization of many written and oral forms of text which belong to various languages.
Practical significance of the thesis work is conditioned by the opportunity of usage the research work in further development of academic processes in the course “Theory of Language”, lingvoculture, cross-cultural communication, socio-linguistics, in practice of teaching languages.
The object of research work is language units of various cultures in oral and written forms of text.
Subject of the thesis work are lingvo-cultural and ethno specific peculiarities of oral and written forms of text, which determine the conceptualization of national picture of the world.
Materials under analyses are oral and written texts from articles, “Tractatus focused” of Wittgenstein, “Когнитивная лингвистика” of Maslova V.A, “Conceptual analyses and conceptual elucidation” of Julia Tanney.
To achieve our aim we applied for the following methods:
-Method of working with appropriate oral and written literature (observe, select, research)
-systematization of information
-method of contextual and conceptual analysis
The paper consists of the introduction, two chapters, conclusion and bibliography:
In introduction we prove the topicality of investigation, set the aims and objectives, and define the methods of the research.
In the first chapter we introduce you different points of view on the determination of the concept “Language of the World Picture”. Also we regarded problems connected with the choice of theoretical basis of cognitive, sociolinguistic and lingvocultural approaches of studying of national picture of world; defined Folklore as the most important component of national heritage, revealed the problems of Language and Culture interaction.
In the second chapter we analyzed the usage of language units in oral and written text by giving the examples of texts; determined the peculiarities of different World Pictures and made their comparative analysis.
In conclusion, we concluded the done work.
1. Language is a mirror of the World.
1.1.
Different points of view on the term “Language World Picture”
Language has been studied for many years and from different perspectives. Ancient Greek philosophers elaborated on its proper use and purpose, modern scholars analyzed how it is produced and perceived. Everything that has so far been said about language can be ascribed to a certain general conception of talking about this issue. There are four such different approaches to talking about language: treating it as a social fact, as natural behavior, as a mental organ, or as an abstract object.
Language as a social phenomenon was first described by Ferdinand se Saussure who claimed that providing only historical description of languages (as it was done at his time) should not be the only approach to this complex entity. He maintained that crucial information about language can be obtained from its common users, who in most cases do not posses practically any theoretical knowledge about their native tongue and yet are competent speakers. Moreover, as Saussure assumed language use reflects the contemporary structure which should enable synchronic language analysis (language used at a given point in time) in addition to diachronic analysis concerned with the past linguistic forms. The social aspect of using language, or speech was called parole by Saussure, while the underlying knowledge of linguistic structure was known as langue.
Another view on language, mainly language as behavior partially derived from the behaviorist psychology and philosophy. Linguists representing this attitude focused on different languages used by various people rather than on linguistic universals, as they assumed that linguistic data is best gathered by observation of human behavior and interaction. Apart from that, it was assumed that meaning of sentences is not observable, thus it must be analyzed referring to introspective judgments. What follows this assumption is the definition of language provided by linguists who represent this approach. They maintain that language is: the totality of utterances that can be made in a speech community.
According to the third approach to language started by Noam Chomsky language is a mental organ. Having noticed certain similarities among languages Chomsky expressed the view that they cannot be explained by environmental factors or be accidental and there needs to be a special mental ability embedded in human brains. He defined language by means of generative grammar: a finite set of rules which would enable users to make an unlimited number of expressions. Representatives of this approach support the view that it is not particular languages that should be analyzed, but the Universal Grammar, or the mental organ that allows humans to speak.
The last group is constituted by scholars who claim that language is an abstract object as it does not occupy any space or time. Thus this view is in opposition to Chomsky’s ideas, but linguists who agree with it emphasize that the analysis of the best abstract models of language can bring helpful effects of the entire area of study.
Language reflects not only reality, but also interprets it, creating special reality where man lives. A.M.Haidegger, an outstanding thinker of the last century named language “The house of reality”. In our thesis we considered language as a way by which we go through into nation’s mentality, into outlook of ancient people to the World and their society. Echoes of past times going through centuries are preserved in today’s proverbs, sayings, phraseological units, metaphors, symbols of culture and etc.
It’s known that person becomes person only when he acquires language and culture of his nation. All refinements of nation’s culture reflect in language, which is specific and unique. Huge part of information about the World comes to person through linguistic channel that’s why person lives rather in the world of concepts, created by him for intellectual, spiritual and social needs, than in the world of objects and things; enormous information comes to him through a word and human’s success in society depends on that how good he possessed the language, and not so much on possession of cultural speech, but rather on his abilities to understand secrets of language. Philosophers even say that understanding thoroughly a word which names any object or event, it’s possible to say that it become easier to capture the real world.
One of the most valuable source of the information about the culture and mentality of the nation are phraseological units, metaphors, symbols and others, because they keep the myths, legends and traditions of the target culture. Well-known Russian linguist B.A.Larin wrote: “Phraseological units always indirectly reflect the nation’s outlook, social system, and ideology of its epoch”. The same can be said about metaphors, symbols and others.
In our work very valuable thought is asserted, that the mystery of language is one of the biggest mysteries of human being; if it won’t be examined enormous knowledge of the past would be lost. Our aim is to help to see the cultural background which consists of language units and which allows to correlate superficial language structures with their deep essence.
Every language creates the World in its own way also it has its way of conceptualization. Thereby linguists decided that every language has unique picture of the World and language speaker needs to arrange utterances in equivalence with its picture. Here we can observe the specific perception of the world fixed in language.
Language is an important method of knowledge formation and existence about the World. Reflecting the objective world in the process of activity, in word people fix the results of cognition, knowledge. The sum of these knowledges fixed in language represents itself what we call “language intervening world”, “language model of the world», or at last “language world picture”. According to wide usage we mostly choose the last term.
For native speaker the mother tongue represents a form of the conceptualization of the world, characteristic for the given culture. The system of values, created within the culture, has its reflection in the language. Moreover, according to W. von Humboldt, each language reflects some definite worldview. Consequently ‘to the extent perception and activities of a person depend on his views’; person’s attitude towards “objects” is completely defined by the language. The same can be said about the famous statement of H. G. Gadamer ‘the tradition in which we live’, as it comes from the correspondence of Gadamer with V. Malakhov, implies, first of all ‘linguistic tradition’. Namely V. Malakhov comments the thesis in the following way: ‘Our reasoning and superstitions are determined by the language we think at. That means that, firstly, our thoughts – at pre-predication level – are defined by the inner structures of the native language. Secondly, our reasoning – ‘the experience of reasoning’ is determined by ‘the experience of the language’ – by the history of the culture created in that language’. Similarly, according to the so called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language and mode of thinking are closely interconnected. As ‘there are no symbols before the speaking man, though the symbol itself has much deeper roots; and the language is the instrument where the universe, desires, imagination find their expression; we inevitably need a word to reproduce the world and make it sacred’, the cultural values, ideals, guidelines, the opinion of a man about the universe and its role in this universe find their realization in the language: the language reflects the fundamental values of the given culture and at the same time forms them. Thus, for the native speaker the mother language represents a form for the conceptualization of the world, characteristic for that given culture.
For understanding this aspect of the human culture, some lexical unites represent ‘Priceless clues’as A. Wierzbicka puts it. ‘Key words –the words which are extremely important and meaningful for the given culture’. From this we may conclude that the accumulated experience somehow is encoded in the language. For example, C. Geertz gives to the notion of ‘culture’ the following definition ‘historically transferred model of notions, put in symbols, as a system of inherited conceptions, that are expressed by means of symbols, through which people communicate with each other and based on which their knowledge about life and their attitudes are formed.
The concept of World picture (including language) basis on the studies of person’s view of the World. If the world is the interaction between man and environment, world picture is a result of the processed information about the person and environment. Thus, the representatives of cognate linguistics fairly asserted that our conceptual system, reflected in the form of language picture of the world, depends on physical and cultural experience and ingenuously connected with it.
The phenomena and external world subjects are presented in human consciousness in the form of an internal image. In opinion of A.N. Leontiev, there is a special “fifth quasi world” which represents to people surrounding reality: it is a “semantic field”, system of meanings. At that time, world picture is a system of forms.
M. Haidegger wrote, that hearing word “picture” first of all we think about imagery of something, “Essentially understood world picture is not the picture representing the world, but the world understood as picture”. There are difficulties between real world reflection and language world picture as fixation of that reflexion. World’s picture can be represented with the help of spatial (up-down, left-right, east-west, near-far), temporal (day-night, summer-winter), quantitative, ethical and other characteristics. Language, traditions, nature and landscape, upbringing, teaching and other social factors also influence in its formation.
Language world picture doesn’t comparable with other special world pictures (chemical, physical and ext.), it precedes them all and forms them, because person can understand surrounded world and himself grace to language, which fixes social- historical experience of common human beings and national. The last one defines the specifics of the language in all its levels. Under specifics of language in consciousness of its speakers defined language world picture, though which prism person perceive the world.
J.D. Apersyan underlined prescientific character of language world picture, calling it naïve. Language world picture as though supplements the objective knowledges about reality, often distorting them (words as atom, dot, light, heat and ext.). Studying semantics of these words, we can reveal the specificity of cognate models, which determines the originality of naïve world picture. As cognition of the world is not free from mistakes and delusions, its conceptual world picture always changing, “drawing again”, whereas language world picture keeps for long the tracks of these mistakes and delusions.
In the opinion of V.B.Kasaevich, world picture, encoded by the means of semantics, by the time can find itself remained, relict, which serves as old materials for new semantics creation. In other words, there are divergences between archaic both semantic system of language and that actual mental model which is valid for the given language collective and is shown in texts generated by it, and also in laws of its behaviour.
Language world picture forms the type of persons treat to the world (nature, animals, to him as the element of the world). It sets the norms of people behavior in the world and defines their relations to the world. Every natural language reflects the defined way of perception and organization (conceptualization) of the world. Expressed their senses take shape of some united system of visions, like collective philosophy, which binds as obligatory to the whole bearers of the language.
Hereby, the role of the language is not only sending messages, but first of all in internal organization of that which is liable to send. It arises some kind of “space of meanings” (in Leontievs’ terminology), that is knowledges about the world fixed in language, where certainly enters the national-cultural experience of the concrete language community. It forms the world of speakers who spoke the given language; there is language world picture as totality of knowledge about the world, imprinted in vocabulary, phraseology, grammar.
Interest to the language picture of the world is also can be found in works of W. Humboldt, who wrote that “different languages serve for nation as organs of their original thinking and perception”. In the end of the 20th century many works concerning language picture were appeared; works of G.A.Brutyan, S.A.Vasiliev, G.K.Kolshanskyi, M.Black, D.Hime, collective monograph “Human factor in language. Language and picture of the world” and others increased interest to that problem is connected with the cognate researches of the last years, in the networks of which attempts to bind together the theory of Gestalts with the theory of Frames. Theory of the Gestalt concerning language displays in several aspects. Thus, on the superficial language level the same Gestalt can be realized in different meanings, and only special survey can place their unity. J.Lacoff have shown war and argument are described by the same terms, that is, equally thought, contact with the same gestalt.
So, a Gestalt the essence the universal representations belonging to depths of human mentality in general and as whole laying out of categorical frameworks of a natural language, i.e. substantial sizes transcendental: a Gestalt lays directly behind a side stated and is organic with it are connected. Reconstructed on the basis of real language data, a Gestalt becomes real substantial sizes of the nearest transcendental.
Humboldt’s idea about “language world outlook has received development in contemporary neogumboltism. Really, each people in own way dismember variety of the world, in own way name these fragments of the world. Originality of the “constructing” world picture determines by individual, group and national (ethnic) verbal and nonverbal experience. National originality of language world picture is examined by neogumbalts not as the result of prolonged historical development, but as given primordial quality of languages. They think people create their unique world, different from that which surrounds them. World picture of the speaker, really, considerable differs from the objective characteristics, objects, happenings description, because it is a “subjective image of objective world”. However language itself doesn’t create that subjective world picture.
World picture, which can be named knowledge about the world, lies on the basis of individual and social consciousness. Language fulfils requirements of informative process. Conceptual pictures of the world at different people can be various, for example at representatives of different epoch, different social, age groups, different areas of scientific knowledge etc. People speaking in different languages, can have under certain conditions close conceptual pictures of the world, and the people speaking in one language, - different. Hence, in a conceptual picture of the world co-operates universal, national and personal.
Picture world is not a simple set of “photos” of subjects, processes, properties etc. It includes not only the reflected objects, but also a position of the reflecting subject, its relation to these objects, at that moment position of the subject is the same reality as same objects. Moreover, as reflexion of the world by the person is not active, and passive, the relation to objects not only generated by these objects, but also is capable for changing them (through activity). From here follows that the system of a national language takes part in designing language picture of the world. Language picture of the world in the whole and main coincides with logic reflexion of the world in consciousness of people. But thus saves the separate items in language world picture to which we include phraseology; every language has its own phraseologies.
Phraseologies play an important role in formation of the language world picture. They are “mirrors of the nation’s life”. The meanings of phraseologies are closely connected with the background knowledges of the speaker, with his life experience, with historical-cultural traditions of his nation. Phraseological units attribute signs to objects which associate with a world picture, mean the whole descriptive situation (text), estimate it, and express the relation to it. By their semantics phraseological units are directed to the person’s activity and behavior.
Sense of whole lines of basic words and phraseological units were formed on the basis of anthropocentric understanding of the world, like a column head, a bottle neck, a table leg, to appropriate, a finger about a finger not to strike, continually, etc. Such nominative units create a cultural-national picture of the world in which the life and customs, customs and behavior of people, their relation to the world and to each other are reflected.
The language picture of the world is created by different paints, the brightest, from our point of view, is mythologemy, is figurative-metaphoric words, connotative words, etc. Our outlook partially is in captivity of language picture of the world. Each concrete language comprises national, original system which defines outlook of bearers of the given language and forms their picture of the world.
Exactly in substantial side of the language (less in grammar) world picture of given ethnos is shown. It’s analyzing help scientists to understand how national cultures differ from each other and how they complement each other. Thus, if values of all words were, in general, cultural specific it would be impossible to investigate cultural distinctions. Therefore being engaged in cultural-national aspect, scientists also consider universal properties of language units. Naïve world picture is reflected in language, which forms as an answer to practical needs of people, as necessary cognate basis of his adaption to the world. Pragmatically egocentrism structures activity as it can form the cognitive area of person. The person measures vast spaces, labor and intellectual activity, a storm of the feelings through itself, accepting all in itself and extending itself on world around. The language picture of the world keeps model of such anthropocentrism and during times when the person depreciates or selects other valuable priorities.
Most likely, set of subject figurative-evident reference representations about subjects, the phenomena which person meets throughout a life more often, than with others, as a whole forms some stable language picture reflexion of the objective validity.
Naïve language picture differs with considerable pragmatism. Applying for absolute true, knowledge of the given type can depart from that that the traditional science would count as an objective truth. Their criterion is formal-logic consistency, and in itself integrity and universality of model, its ability to serve explaining matrix for experience structuring.
Wittgenstein in the Tractatus focussed on a picture theory of language. He was clear that this meant that language mirrored reality, mirrored the world. The picture theory was an account in essence of the relation between a word and what it referred to in the external environment, or between a sentence, a proposition or sachverhalt and the event or situation to which it referred.
Every language world picture can keep casual standard lacunes, logically unexplainable. At use of complete images as standards without instructions of the basis of comparison on the foreground the approving or disapproving emotional relation of the subject of speech to the designated, as a rule, is put forward.
The world reflected through a prism of the mechanism of secondary sensations, embodied in metaphors, comparisons, symbols, is a primary factor which defines universality and specificity of any concrete national language picture of the world.
Thus, the important circumstance is differentiation of the universal human factor and national specificity in various language pictures of the world. As the genetic mechanism is an estimation of corporal sensations, that, intertwining with human activity, simultaneously both universal, and national-specific, it invariably leads, as a result of such interaction, to creation of language pictures of the world with typologically general and specific features.
The human activity including as a component and symbolical, i.e. Cultural, installed simultaneously also it is universal, and national-is specific. These properties define both an originality of a language picture of the world, and its universality.
I Integrated form of the reality in ordinary consciousness first of all includes repeating presentations of empirical practice and symbolical universe. Every culture type produces its own symbolic language and “world image” which provides them with meanings of language elements. O.Spengler even offered the term “parasymbol” for characterization of the culture in spatial extend.
Choice of etalons and symbols in naïve world picture actually is motivated. That motivation depends on characteristic of the whole conceptual system and may be exposed in several cases of language world picture. Phraseological units itself, examined by us, as V.N.Telia said can: “Act the role of etalons, stereotypes of national-cultural world look, or indicate to their symbolic character and play the role of cultural signs.”
The naive picture of the world of orderly consciousness, in which the subject way of perception prevails, has interpreting character. Language, fixing collective stereotypic and reference representations, objectify and also does interpreting activity of human consciousness accessible to studying.
One of the most interesting concepts explaining communication of language and culture belongs toW.Humboldt who considers, that national character of culture finds reflexion in language by means of special vision of the world. Language and culture, being rather independent phenomena, are connected through values of language signs which provide ontological unity of language and culture.
In the end of XX century we experienced lingvocultural boom when problems of interrelation of language and culture left in number of the most actual in modern linguistics: last five years almost in each European country has passed on several lingvocultural conferences, there were their materials, and collections of articles which are published.
In last decade linguistics turn toward to language learning in close connection with people. It has defined anthropological principle in linguistics when language studying become studying of the speaking person. The anthropological linguistics is understood, first of all, as research of the human factor in language. In the attention centre it appears two circles of problems:
Definition of how the person influences language;
Definition of how language influences the person, its thinking, culture.
To number of the fundamental concepts expressing specificity of the person and its mutual relations with the world, the concept of a picture of the world concerns.
The world picture is a complete image of the world which grows out of all spiritual activity of the person. It arises at the person during it in detail-practical activities, directed on world reconsideration. The person feels the world, beholds it, comprehends, learns, interprets, reflects, stays in it. Thus, the image of the world arises in various certificates of attitude, world outlook, a world view, attitude, outlooks- in certificates of experience of the world as integrity.
Depending on the bases which undertake as criteria, the typology of pictures of the world can be created. So, depending on the subject of knowledge, the picture of the world of the adult person and the child, a picture of the world of a civilised society and an archaic picture of the world is allocated. Depending on object, differ global and local (often scientific) world pictures. An example of complete pictures of the world is general philosophical, general scientific, religious pictures of the world. As the local sociological, information, physical, art pictures of the world act.
The scientific picture of the world, in its modern condition is an ideal which constantly changes in process of change of a paradigm of knowledge and at revision of views and theories. Figuratively speaking, this not finished picturesque cloth of the artist, and «a mobile mosaic», which separate elements that are scattered, gather again.
In each culture key words exist. To be considered as a culture keyword, it should be often used, the word should be a part of phraseological units and proverbs.
Hence, each concrete language represents system which leaves the mark on consciousness of its speakers and forms their original picture of the world.
1.2. Language and culture: problems of interaction.
Language is that problem of interrelation which lays on the surface of person’s culture life, therefore since XIX century (J.Grimm, R.Raek, V.Humboldt, A.A.Potebnja) and to this day, language and culture interactions is one of central in linguistics. The first attempts of the decision of this problem have shown in V.Humboldt's (1985) works which substantive provisions of the concept can be reduced to the following: 1) material and spiritual culture are embodied in language; 2) any culture is national, its national character is expressed in language by means of special vision of the world; internal specific view of the world is inherent for every language; 3) language is an expression of "national spirit», its culture; 4) language is a mediating link between the person and the world surrounding it. W.Humboldt's concept has received original interpretation in A.A.Potebni's work «Thought and language», in S.Balli, Z.Vandrieza's works, Bo-duena de Courter, R.O.Yakobson and other researchers.
The best minds of XIX century (V.Humboldt, A.A.Potebnja) treated language as spiritual force. Language is such environment surrounding us, out of which and without which participation we cannot live. As V.Humboldt wrote, language is «the world lies between the world of the external phenomena and private world of the person». Hence, being the environment of our dwelling, language does not exist out of us as an objective reality, it is in ourselves, in our consciousness, our memory; it changes the outlines with each movement of thought, with each new welfare role.
Within the limits of the second approach Sapir and Whorf School, various schools of neogumbolts, developed a so-called hypothesis of a linguistic relativity investigation of this problem.
At the heart of this hypothesis the belief lays, that what people see the world differently - through a prism of the native language. For its supporters the real world exists so far as it is reflected in language. But if each language reflects the reality in the way inherent only for it, hence, languages differ with their «language pictures of the world».
Sapir and Whorf interpreted these data as indicating that colors are not objective, naturally determined segments of reality. In other words, the colors we see are predetermined by what our culture prepares us to see. This example used to support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was objectively tested in the 1960's. That research indicated that they went too far. All normal humans share similar sense perceptions of color despite differences in color terminology from one language to another. The physiology of our eyes is essentially the same. People all over the world can see subtle gradations of color and can comprehend other ways of dividing up the spectrum of visible light. However, as a society's economy and technology increase in complexity, the number of color terms usually also increases. That is to say, the spectrum of visible light gets subdivided into more categories. As the environment changes, culture and language typically respond by creating new terminology to describe it.
In hypothesis of Sapir-Whorf following substantive provisions are allocated: 1. Language causes a way of thinking of the people speaking on it. 2. The way of knowledge of the real world depends on in what languages learners think. «We dismember the nature in a direction prompted by our language. We allocate in the world of the phenomena those or other categories and types at all because they are axiomatic, on the contrary, the world appears to us as a kaleidoscopic stream of impressions which should be organized in our consciousness, and it means basically - the language system stored in our consciousness. We dismember the world, we will organize it in concepts and we distribute values so, instead of differently, basically because we are participants of the agreement ordering similar ordering. This agreement is valid for certain language collective and is fixed in system of models of our language».
The given hypothesis has got support and the further working out in L.Vejsgerbera's works, in its concept of language as "the intermediate world», standing between the objective reality and consciousness. «Language operates as creating force in all areas of a spiritual life».
In researches of some authors the hypothesis of a linguistic relativity has received modern actual sounding. First of all - in D.Olfrda's works, J. Carrols, D.Hajmsa and other authors in which concepts Sapir-Whorf theory is essentially filled. So, D.Hajms has entered one more principle of a functional relativity of languages according to which there is a distinction in character of their communicative functions between languages. Negative estimation to hypothesis of Sapir Whorf give D.Dodd, G.V.Kolshansky, R.M.Uajt, R.M.Frumkina, E.Hollen-shtejn.
Verbal illusions play the big role in creation of social stereotypes, for example, national stereotypes of "German", «Chukchi», "Caucasians" who form national prejudices. Verbal stamps which paint the world in the necessary color take root in minds of people: the light future, great indestructible friendship of the people, great accomplishments etc. It is not casual that governors of the totalitarian states paid special attention to language: Lenin's struggle for language "clearing", Stalin's article about language, Brezhnev's struggle against "infection" of language with foreign lexicon etc.
There are many ways of theorizing the relationship between the social and the cultural. In this limited context, we just want to stress that all societal life may be considered as both social and cultural.
The analysis of social life typically deals with relational, temporal and spatial aspects of activities, institutions and structures, whereas the analysis of cultural life typically deals with the production and reproduction of meaning and representations of various realities. The two sides cannot be separated from each other. All social life carries meaning, and all exchanges and negotiations of meaning are embedded in more or less shifting social structures and relations of power.
When we focus on language as a means of forming meaning, we enter an intellectual tradition very different from the sociolinguistic approach we have just outlined. The intimate connections between (specific) languages and (specific) cultures has been a fundamental theme in the nation building process in Europe since the late 18th century, not least in the German form of national romanticism.
Foreign language studies since the 19th century have been deeply influenced by this figure of thought, and are just beginning to question the national paradigm and look for alternative ways of conceptualizing the study of language, literature and culture.
Nowadays, the most usual and easy way of dealing with the relationship between language and culture is to state that it is a complex relationship, thus verbalizing the difficulties of coming to grips with this thorny question. Those who do formulate an opinion on the issue may largely be characterized as holding one of two opposite positions:
· language and culture are inseparable
· language and culture are separable
The first view is associated with the cultural turn in linguistics since the 1980s, and is maintained in various forms in research disciplines such as linguistic anthropology, translation studies, and studies of intercultural communication. This is of course also a popular belief among people in general, not least in Europe in the present process of political integration of nation states in a larger union. The second view is mostly associated with the study of English as an international language. In this case it is maintained that languages - and especially English - should be seen as flexible instruments of communication that may in principle be used with any subject matter by anybody anywhere in the world.
As we already said, none of these positions is satisfying. The first one emphasizes that language is culture-bound, and one is not far from a conception of a closed universe of language, people, nation, culture, history, mentality and land. This position is totally at odds with the social and transnational view of language that I have just presented. The other position claims that language is culturally neutral. Language is seen as a code, and one is not far from a reconstitution of the classical structuralist conception of the autonomy of language. To this we would say that no language is culturally neutral. All natural languages (i.e. their users) constantly produce and reproduce culture (i.e. meaning).
For many people, language is not just the medium of culture but also is a part of culture. It is quite common for immigrants to a new country to retain their old customs and to speak their first language amid fellow immigrants, even if all present are comfortable in their new language. This occurs because the immigrants are eager to preserve their own heritage, which includes not only customs and traditions but also language. This is also seen in many Jewish communities, especially in older members: Yiddish is commonly spoken because it is seen as a part of Jewish culture.
Linguistic differences are also often seen as the mark of another culture, and they very commonly create divisiveness among neighboring peoples or even among different groups of the same nation. A good example of this is in Canada, where French-speaking natives of Quebec clash with the English-speaking majority. This sort of conflict is also common in areas with a great deal of tribal warfare. It is even becoming an issue in America as speakers of standard American English - mainly whites and educated minorities - observe the growing number of speakers of Black English vernacular. Debates are common over whether it is proper to use "Ebonics" in schools, while its speakers continue to assert that the dialect is a fundamental part of the "black culture".
L.Elemsev expressed an idea that language and reality are structurally similar and language structure can be equating to the structure of the reality or can be regarded as its deformed reflection.
E.F.Tarasov notices, that language is included in culture as sign "body" (meaning) is a cultural subject, in which language and communicative ability of the person are featured, value of a sign is also cultural formation which arises only in human activity. As well culture is included into language, because it is shaped in text.
At the same time, language and culture interaction is needed to be investigated extremely cautiously, remembering, that they are different semiotics systems. For the sake of justice it is necessary to tell, that, being semiotics systems, they have much in common: 1) culture, no less than language, are the forms of consciousness displaying outlook of the person; 2) culture and language exist in dialogue between themselves; 3) the subject of culture and language is always the individual or society, the person or a society; 4) norm is general for language and culture line; 5) a historicism is one of intrinsic properties of culture and language; 6) “dynamic-static” is inherent for language and culture.
Language and culture are interconnected: 1) in communicative processes; 2) in ontogenesis (formation of language abilities of the person); 3) in phylogenesis (formation of the patrimonial, public person).
These two essences differ in following: 1) language as a phenomenon installation on the mass addressee while in culture the elitism is prevailed; 2) though culture is a sign system (like language), but it is incapable for self realization; 3) as it was already marked by us, language and culture are different semiotics systems.
These reasoning allow drawing a conclusion that culture is not isomorphic (absolutely corresponds), and homomorphic to language (is structurally similar). The picture which shows a language and culture parity, is extremely difficult and multidimensional. For today some approaches were outlined in the decision of this problem.
Other approaches were developed basically by Russian philosophers - S.A.Atanovskim, G.A.Brutjanom, E.I.Kukushkinym, E.S.Markarjanom. The meaning of this approach in the following: the interrelation of language and culture appears movement in the same side; as language reflects the reality, and culture is the integral component of this reality which faces the person, also language is a simple reflection of culture. Reality changes, cultural-national stereotypes vary also, language changes also. One of the attempts to answer a question on influence of separate fragments (or spheres) cultures on language functioning was issued in functional stylistics of the Prague school and modern sociolinguistics.
Thus, if culture influence on language quite obviously (it is studied in the first approach) the question on return influence of language on culture while remains opened. It makes essence of the second approach to a problem of a parity of language and culture.
There are many ways in which the phenomena of language and culture are intimately related. Both phenomena are unique to humans and have therefore been the subject of a great deal of anthropological, sociological, and even memetic study. Language, of course, is determined by culture, though the extent to which this is true is now under debate. The converse is also true to some degree: culture is determined by language - or rather, by the replicators that created both, memes.
In this vein, anthropologist Verne Ray conducted a study in the 1950's, giving color samples to different American Indian tribes and asking them to give the names of the colors. He concluded that the spectrum we see as "green", "yellow", etc. was an entirely arbitrary division, and each culture divided the spectrum separately. According to this hypothesis, the divisions seen between colors are a consequence of the language we learn, and do not correspond to divisions in the natural world. A similar hypothesis is upheld in the extremely popular meme of Eskimo words for snow - common stories vary from fifty to upwards of two hundred.
Extreme cultural relativism of this type has now been clearly refuted. Eskimos use at most twelve different words for snow, which is not many more than English speakers and should be expected since they exist in a cold climate. The color-relativity hypothesis has now been completely debunked by more careful, thorough, and systematic studies which show a remarkable similarity between the ways in which different cultures divide the spectrum.
Of course, there are ways in which culture really does determine language, or at least certain facets thereof. Obviously, the ancient Romans did not have words for radios, televisions, or computers because these items were simply not part of their cultural context. In the same vein, uncivilized tribes living in Europe in the time of the Romans did not have words for tribunes, praetors, or any other trapping of Roman government because Roman law was not part of their culture.
Our culture does, sometimes, restrict what we can think about efficiently in our own language. For example, some languages have only three color terms equivalent to black, white, and red; a native speaker of this language would have a difficult time expressing the concept of "purple" efficiently. Some languages are also more expressive about certain topics. For example, it is commonly acknowledged that Yiddish is a linguistic champion, with an amazing number of words referring to the simplemind.
We carry the further reasoning on interrelation of language and culture to the third approach.
Language is the fact of the culture because: 1) it a component of culture which we inherit from our ancestors; 2) language is the basic tool by means of which we acquire culture; 3) language is major of all phenomena of a cultural order, if we wish to understand essence of culture - a science, religion, the literature we should consider these phenomena as the codes developed model. Therefore the conceptual judgment of culture can occur only by means of a natural language.
According to our concept, as far as each native speaker is simultaneously the culture bearer and language, signs get ability to carry out function of signs on culture and by that serve as means of representation of the basic installations of culture. For this reason language is capable to display cultural-national mentality of its speaker. The culture is correlated with language through the concept of spaces.
So, language is a component of culture and its tool is the reality of our spirit, a culture face; it expresses bared specific lines of national mentality. Language is the mechanism which has opened before area of consciousness before the person (N.I.Zhinkin).
1.3. Folklore as the most important and well-acclaimed component of the cultural heritage of a nation
Folklore is the traditional art, literature, knowledge, and practice that is disseminated largely through oral communication and behavioral example. Every group with a sense of its own identity shares, as a central part of that identity, folk traditions–the things that people traditionally believe (planting practices, family traditions, and other elements of worldview), do (dance, make music, sew clothing), know (how to build an irrigation dam, how to nurse an ailment, how to prepare barbecue), make (architecture, art, craft), and say (personal experience stories, riddles, song lyrics). As these examples indicate, in most instances there is no hard-and-fast separation of these categories, whether in everyday life or in folklorists’ work.
The word "folklore" names an enormous and deeply significant dimension of culture. Considering how large and complex this subject is, it is no wonder that folklorists define and describe folklore in so many different ways. Try asking dance historians for a definition of "dance," for instance, or anthropologists for a definition of "culture." No one definition will suffice–nor should it.
In part, this is also because particular folklorists emphasize particular parts or characteristics of the world of folklore as a result of their own work, their own interests, or the particular audience they’re trying to reach. And for folklorists, as for the members of any group who share a strong interest, disagreeing with one another is part of the work–and the enjoyment–of the field, and is one of the best ways to learn.
But to begin, below we have cited several folklorists’ definitions and descriptions of folklore, given in the order in which they were written and published. (One of them uses the word "folklife" instead, which American folklorists, following their European colleagues, have used more frequently of late.) None of these definitions answers every question by itself, and certainly none of them is the American Folklore Society’s official definition (we don’t have one), but each offers a good place to start. From time to time we’ll add the views of other folklorists to this page.
One thing you’ll note about these definitions and descriptions is that they challenge the notion of folklore as something that is simply "old," "old-fashioned," "exotic," "rural," "peasant," "uneducated," "untrue," or "dying out." Though folklore connects people to their past, it is a central part of life in the present, and is at the heart of all cultures–including our own–throughout the world.
For more information about folklore and about what folklorists do, please see the other sections of this "About Folklore" chapter, as well as the other chapters of this AFSNet web site.
Folklore is a body of traditional belief, custom, and expression, handed down largely by word of mouth and circulating chiefly outside of commercial and academic means of communication and instruction. Every group bound together by common interests and purposes, whether educated or uneducated, rural or urban, possesses a body of traditions which may be called its folklore. Into these traditions enter many elements, individual, popular, and even "literary," but all are absorbed and assimilated through repetition and variation into a pattern which has value and continuity for the group as a whole.
Dan Ben-Amos. Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context, in Américo Paredes and Richard Bauman, eds. Toward New Perspectives in Folklore. Austin: University of Texas Press for the American Folklore Society, 1972.
…folklore is artistic communication in small groups.
Dell Hymes. Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Perspective. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974.
Folklore study is” the study of communicative behavior with an esthetic, expressive, or stylistic dimension.”
Jan Brunvand. The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction, 2nd edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 1978.
Folklore comprises the unrecorded traditions of a people; it includes both the form and content of these traditions and their style or technique of communication from person to person.
Folklore is the traditional, unofficial, non-institutional part of culture. It encompasses all knowledge, understandings, values, attitudes, assumptions, feelings, and beliefs transmitted in traditional forms by word of mouth or by customary examples.
Edward D. Ives. Joe Scott, the Woodsman-Songmaker. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978.
No song, no performance, no act of creation can be properly understood apart from the culture or subculture in which it is found and of which it is a part; nor should any "work of art" be looked on as a thing in itself apart from the continuum of creation-consumption.
Barre Toelken. The Dynamics of Folklore. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.
Tradition [means] not some static, immutable force from the past, but those pre-existing culture-specific materials and options that bear upon the performer more heavily than do his or her own personal tastes and talents. We recognize in the use of tradition that such matters as content and style have been for the most part passed on but not invented by the performer.
Dynamic recognizes, on the other hand, that in the processing of these contents and styles in performance, the artist’s own unique talents of inventiveness within the tradition are highly valued and are expected to operate strongly. Time and space dimensions remind us that the resulting variations may spread geographically with great rapidity (as jokes do) as well as down through time (good luck beliefs). Folklore is made up of informal expressions passed around long enough to have become recurrent in form and context, but changeable in performance.
…modern American folklorists do not limit their attention to the rural, quaint, or "backward" elements of the culture. Rather, they will study and discuss any expressive phenomena–urban or rural–that seem to act like other previously recognized folk traditions. This has led to the development of a field of inquiry with few formal boundaries, one with lots of feel but little definition, one both engaging and frustrating
Surely no other discipline is more concerned with linking us to the cultural heritage from the past than is folklore; no other discipline is more concerned with revealing the interrelationships of different cultural expressions than is folklore; and no other discipline is so concerned …with discovering what it is to be human. It is this attempt to discover the basis of our common humanity, the imperatives of our human existence that puts folklore study at the very center of humanistic study.
"Folklore," though coined as recently as 1846, is the old word, the parental concept to the adjective "folk." Customarily folklorists refer to the host of published definitions, add their own, and then get on with their work, leaving the impression that definitions of folklore are as numberless as insects. But all the definitions bring into dynamic association the ideas of individual creativity and collective order.
Folklore is traditional. Its center holds. Changes are slow and steady. Folklore is variable. The tradition remains wholly within the control of its practitioners. It is theirs to remember, change, or forget. Answering the needs of the collective for continuity and of the individual for active participation, folklore…is that which is at once traditional and variable.
Like Edgar Allan Poe’s purloined letter, folklife is often hidden in full view, lodged in the various ways we have of discovering and expressing who we are and how we fit into the world. Folklife is reflected in the names we bear from birth, invoking affinities with saints, ancestors, or cultural heroes. Folklife is the secret languages of children, the codenames of CB operators, and the working slang of watermen and doctors. It is the shaping of everyday experiences in stories swapped around kitchen tables or parables told from pulpits. It is the African American rhythms embedded in gospel hymns, bluegrass music, and hip hop, and the Lakota flutist rendering anew his people’s ancient courtship songs.
Folklife is the sung parodies of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the variety of ways there are to skin a muskrat, preserve string beans, or join two pieces of wood. Folklife is the society welcoming new members at bris and christening, and keeping the dead incorporated on All Saints Day. It is the marking of the Jewish New Year at Rosh Hashanah and the Turkic New Year at Nauruz. It is the evolution of vaqueros into buckaroos, and the riderless horse, its stirrups backward, in the funeral processions of high military commanders.
Folklife is the thundering of foxhunters across the rolling Rappahannock countryside and the listening of hill toppers to hounds crying fox in the Tennessee mountains. It is the twirling of lariats at western rodeos, and the spinning of double-dutch jumpropes in West Philadelphia. It is scattered across the landscape in Finnish saunas and Italian vineyards; engraved in the split-rail boundaries of Appalachian "hollers" and the stone fences around Catskill "cloves"; scrawled on urban streetscapes by graffiti artists; and projected onto skylines by the tapering steeples of churches, mosques, and temples.
Folklife is community life and values, artfully expressed in myriad forms and interactions. Universal, diverse, and enduring, it enriches the nation and makes us a commonwealth of cultures.
Every group bound together or by common interests and purposes, whether educated or uneducated, rural or urban, possesses a body of traditions which may be called its folklore. Into these traditions enter many elements, individual, popular, and even "literary," but all are absorbed and assimilated through repetition and variation into a pattern which has value and continuity for the group as a whole.
1.3.1 EXPRESSIONS OF FOLKLORE IN WRITTEN AND ORAL FORMS OF TEXT
“Expressions of folklore” means productions consisting of characteristic elements of the traditional artistic heritage developed and maintained by a community of (name of the country) or by individuals reflecting the traditional artistic expectations of such a community, in particular:
(i) verbal expressions, such as folk tales, folk poetry and riddles;
(ii) musical expressions, such as folk songs and instrumental music;
(iii) expressions by action, such as folk dances, plays and artistic forms of rituals whether or not reduced to a material form; and
(iv) tangible expressions such as:
(a) productions of folk art, in particular, drawings, paintings, carvings, sculptures, pottery, terracotta, mosaic, woodwork, metalware, jewelry, basket weaving, needlework, textiles, carpets, costumes;
(b) musical instruments;
[(c) architectural forms.]
The term ‘folklore’ was first coined by William Thoms in 1846. He referred to folklore in his letter to the The Athenaeum to replace ‘popular antiquities’ and ‘popular literature.’ Initially the word had been used in hyphenated form ‘folk-lore,’ but later on the hyphen was discarded. William Thoms meant to include manners, customs, observations, superstitions, ballads, proverbs and so on, in the term ‘folklore,’ which he summarized as the lore of the people. Indeed, the pioneering work done by Thoms did lead to increasing awareness about the characteristics of folklore and the second half of the 19th century witnessed a large interest shown by eminent scholars in understanding the fundamentals of the vast subject. Since the introduction of the term ‘folklore,’ scholars all over the world put their head together to offer a rational definition of the word. The controversy that emerged in satisfactorily defining the term was so intense that in the Standard Dictionary of Folklore, edited by Maria Leach, there are twenty-one definitions given by different scholars. While going through the definitions one can attribute the reasons for the dispute mainly to the oral tradition of folklore. In a society where the masses are illiterate, the oral tradition is the means through which propagation of the necessary elements of culture takes place. In such a society, scholars used the term ‘folklore’ to refer to the language of the people, the system of their livelihood like hunting, agriculture, customs relating to marriages, deaths, etc., and the basic code of conduct, all of which are transmitted orally. According to scholars, all elements of learning that are passed through an oral tradition from generation to generation in a society belong to the domain of folklore. However, it may not be wise to consider all that is passed on orally as folklore. It is, perhaps, more reasonable to limit folklore to the creative aspects of a society, as reflected in its day-to-day life and expressed in material or non-material forms, rather than referring purely to the form of transmission, whether written or oral. Alan Dundes observes rightly when he states:
Since materials other than folklore are also orally transmitted, the criterion of oral transmission by itself is not sufficient to distinguish folklore from non-folklore.
While upholding the fact that not all that is transmitted orally is folklore one must also try to analyze whether the reverse of this position can be accepted as a base for the purpose of argument, that is, whether it is correct to interpret that only those elements of learning which are transmitted orally form part of folklore. If this thesis is correct, most of those parts of folklore, which have evolved through the written method, fall outside the pasture of folklore. An English literature has a sizeable share of folk songs, folk tales, poems, riddles and even many stories forming part of great epic like Beowulf stories, all of which form part of the rich heritage of folklore, but are still essentially expressed and communicated in written form. It is only preposterous to deny the status of folklore to these manifestations solely on the ground that they are in written form. Again a quote from Alan Dundes proves this point beyond doubt:
There are some forms of folklore which are manifested and communicated almost exclusively in the written as opposed to oral form, such as autograph-book verse, book marginalia, epitaphs, and traditional letters. In actual practice a professional folklorist does not go so far as to say that a folktale or a ballad is not folklore, simply because it has at some time in its life history been transmitted by script or print. But he would argue that if a folktale or a ballad had never been in the oral tradition, it is not folklore. It might be a literary production based upon a folk model.
As in the case of other parts of the world, in Kazakhstan too ballads, folktales and folk music have passed through the oral and written traditions. Even though some of these forms of folklore are authored by famous personalities they were accepted by the folk and have become part of the folklore. Yet another category of folklore is that which is neither oral nor written. Folk dances, folk arts and crafts, folk paintings, sculptures, etc., are transmitted not orally or through written medium, but through visual tradition, imitations, observations, through training and performances. As such, the attempt to define folklore purely on the basis of the form in which it is transmitted or passed from generation to generation is also not a satisfactory or foolproof solution for arriving at a rational definition of the term of folklore.
There are some social scientists who hold the view that folklore is the creation of a group of people who belong to the same contiguity of dwelling place and culture regardless of whether the location of residence is city, town or village. These scholars are of the view that folklore is the creative product of a community sharing similar habitat and culture. Their customs and beliefs, the language spoken and the traditional patterns of livelihood share certain common characteristics. Their folklore is reflected in their creative ideas and is the common property of the community.
Folklore, thus, is the product of human creativity, creation of people who live in a particular geographical area, sharing the same language, culture, mechanism of livelihood and living conditions. The life styles and traditions of the folk are characterized by a common identity. Folklore is the product of the creative ideas of the people who express such creativity through verbal, artistic or material forms, and this in turn is transmitted orally or in written form or through some other medium from one generation to another, belonging to a literate or nonliterate society, tribal or non-tribal, rural or urban people. In order to fully understand the depth and width of the term ‘folklore’, one must analyze the elements that constitute folklore. Those who view folklore as ‘verbal art’ confine the term to art forms which are transmitted orally, and folk arts like dance forms, painting or sculpture fall outside of the purview of such a term. Folk beliefs, customs, chants and charms are verbal and not art. Similarly, we have elements of folklore, which are neither art nor verbal namely, folk games, folk technology and folk medicine.
Based on the characteristics that have been identified as essential attributes of folklore it may be possible to categorize the following elements of folklore:
Folk Literature
A very important and popular component of folk literature is folk tales. These include myths, legends, fairy tales, anecdotes, short stories, etc. In addition, proverbs, riddles, ballads, songs, rhymes, etymologies, folk titles, metaphors, chain letters, poetry, etc. are all part of the folk literature.
Most of these elements which form part of folk literature have been created and passed on by word of mouth, some of them have been essentially oral literature now preserved in script and some have been traditionally preserved in written form.
Folk Practices
Folk practices cannot be termed as folk literature or folk art. Folk beliefs, customs, superstitions, rites and rituals, folk festivals, etc., are folk practices forming part of a community’s daily life. Folk games, folk sport, animal sports, etc., are related to the folk’s life but are of occasional occurrence.
Folk arts or artistic folklore
Folk dances, folk theatre, folk gestures are all performing arts. Non-performing arts like painting, sculpture, embroidery, weaving, carpet making, costumes designing, archery are also forms of folklore.
Folk Science and Technology
Methods of folk treatment, folk medicines, preparation of dairy products, fertilizers, methods of agriculture and seed technology fall under folk science. Under folk technology, folk architecture, tool making, ornament making, pottery, etc., are some examples of the common forms.
Thus, to conclude, based on the characteristics that have been associated with it, ‘folklore’ can be defined as the sum total of human creativity. It encompasses the customs, games, beliefs, festivals, and practices which human societies have owned through tradition from generation to generation. It includes literature, performing and non-performing arts, paintings, sculptures, arts and crafts, embroidered quilts, alpanas and their related mechanisms and designs, which have been handed down by tradition to the societies from previous generations through word of mouth or traditionally by non-oral means. The patterns of houses, fences, tools, and many other materials being used by the societies, as well as those materials, their traditional manufacturing techniques and architectural designs, which the human societies have inherited from their forefathers; the medicines and other objects invented through experimentation and traditional scientific methods, which passed on as heritage to the societies through generations. The process of creation, making, designing and construction of these elements, as well as their sustenance in the societies, which has been in operation since ancient times and in a similar manner their transmission, diffusion, creation of variants, reshaping and renewal which have also been a continuous phenomenon since long past. Some of these elements were handed down orally, some in writing, some both orally and in writing and some through practice, imitation and observation, but all have been the products of tradition. The process of their transmission is still continuing in present-day societies and this will continue to be so in the days to come. One of the important aspects of folklore is its impact on society as well as society’s influence on folklore. Folklore has a symbiotic relationship with society in that it causes changes in the society and the social changes also effect modifications in folklore. Consequently, the nature of folklore has been transforming over the ages. It is true that this inter-relationship is inseparable. But experts argue that since folklore is the product of the society and not vice-versa, the influence of the society on the folklore is much greater than the influence of the folklore on the society. This makes folklore animate, substantially absorbing social changes and, in parallel, moving with the society.
It is also to be noted that there is an individual element in the creation of the folklore. It is a fact that one of the members of the society at a particular point in time created a particular object which later became the folklore of the people by means of acceptance by a society and subsequently followed by generations. So, for a period of time, it is possible that the identity of the individual who has created it may be associated with it even after it forms the folklore of a society. This makes it clear that for treating an item as folklore it is not mandatory that the creator must be unknown. There may not be any copyright protection for the work since it is old, but still it will fall under folklore and thus qualify for legal protection.
When one examines the concept of folklore in the above perspective, it appears that it serves two important functions; entertainment and social education. The entertainment value certainly made the folklore, as well as its underlying message for human society and philosophy of life, readily acceptable to the people. The functional aspect of social education made folklore the integral part of the development process of society. This, in some cases, allows folklore to perform economic functions.
Conclusion
In the theoretical part of our thesis paper we set the aim to give the definition to the concept “Language World Picture”, to examine Language as a mirror of social life in the concept of cross-cultural communication, to reveal the problems of Language and Culture interaction and to determine “Folklore” as the most important and well-acclaimed component of the cultural heritage of the nation.
We divided our theoretical part into 3 chapters. In the first chapter “Different points of view on the term “Language World Picture” we presented you various approaches to the concept “Language World Picture”, notably given definitions of outstanding linguists as W. Humboldt, Wittgenstein who wrote one of the most significant works in the field of lingvoculture, Russian linguist Maslova who also made a huge investigation of “Language World Picture”, especially Russian World Picture.
In the theory of “Language and Culture: problems of interaction” the relationship between language and culture have shown and that these two concepts are inseparable phenomena.
In the third chapter “Folklore as the most important and well-acclaimed component of the cultural heritage of the nation” we gave the brief observe to the concept “Folklore” and regarded it as the main reflector and keeper of the cultural heritage. Also we made a subtitle “Expression of Folklore in Oral and Written forms of Text” where we discerned the ways of folklore expression; defined the oral and written forms of text.
Huge work has been done on the investigating of the topic of our thesis paper and we claim that theoretical part of the paper can be helpful tool for teachers as the basis of elective course on “linguistics”, “lingvoculture”, “sociolinguistics” and also for everyone who is interested in this field.
2.
Reflection of Language World Picture and National-Cultural Specificities in Oral and Written forms of Text.
2.1.
Comparative analysis
of Language World Pictures and National-Cultural Specificities in Written and Oral forms of Text.
Wilhelm Humboldt wrote a background: «In each language there is put in pawn a outlook. Each language describes round the people to which it belongs, a circle which limits can leave only in the event that …» [7, with. 284]. Thus, there are the prepotent, key emotions having universal character, however ways of their expression have national specificity. In this connection, it is possible to speak about the national dictionary of emotions where the emotional associations are peculiar to each language.
These emotional associations are based on national-cultural experience and on traditions depend on type of a civilisation and culture. There are a lot of examples of curious ethnic examples in linguistic literature. So, for example, image of the lean person in Russian language consciousness contacts with pole or a skeleton (lean as a pole (as a skeleton) (compare in English language perception - «lean as banbaric cheese», in Japanese «lean as a mosquito skeleton», in Vietnamese - «lean as the dried up cicada», in Turkmen - «lean as a ladder» etc.)) ). The health standard in Russian language representation usually is the bull (is healthy, as a bull), working capacity - a horse (to work as a horse); in English language the health standard - a horse (as strong as a horse - strong as a horse), awkwardness - not a bear, as in Russian, but a puppy (as clumsy as a puppy - clumsy as a puppy), etc.
The word "pig" as zoomorphism in Russian associates with a dirt, an ingratitude, bad manners, in English language - with a gluttony, in the Kazakh language is perceived as a swear word (having religious connotation).
"Dog" in Russian picture of the world (along with the negative connotation) associates with fidelity, unpretentiousness that has found reflexion in such phraseological units as the dog fidelity, for Kazakh people this animal has contempt connotation. For Eskimos dog has only positive estimation, it is a draught animal which helps in farm.
"Carp" for Japanese is a symbol of courage, force, boldness (as a lion for Russian).Japanese wishing to pay a compliment to the Russian partner, can say, that his son is similar to carp. Hardly, it will be correctly apprehended by Russian because of background word meanings ‘fish ’ (the passive, faceless beginning, for example, neither fish nor fowl).
The way of thinking in one or another language affects universal Language World Picture. For example typology of outlook has national colouring. In particular, in the experiments hold on computers with the colour screen, various reactions to this or that colour at representatives of different cultures are established. So, red colour in the USA symbolises danger, in France - aristocracy, in Egypt - death, in India - a life and creativity, in Japan - anger and danger, in China - happiness; blue colour in the USA - courage, in France - freedom and the world, in Egypt - belief, virtue, true, in Japan - meanness, in China - the sky and clouds; green colour in the USA - safety, in France - a crime, in Egypt - fertility and force, in India - fertility and prosperity, in Japan - the future, a youth and energy, in China - a dynasty of Mines, the sky and clouds; Yellow colour in the USA - cowardice, in France - temporariness, in Egypt - happiness and prosperity, in India - success, in Japan - grace and nobleness, in China - a birth, riches and the power; grey colour in Russian - mediocrity, dullness, in England - nobleness, elegance.
| Peoples’ ideas of time differ across languages in other ways. For example, English speakers tend to talk about time using horizontal spatial metaphors (e.g., "The best is ahead of us," "The worst is behind us"), whereas Mandarin speakers have a vertical metaphor for time (e.g., the next month is the "down month" and the last month is the "up month"). Mandarin speakers talk about time vertically more often than English speakers do, so do Mandarin speakers think about time vertically more often than English speakers do? Imagine this simple experiment. I stand next to you, point to a spot in space directly in front of you, and tell you, "This spot, here, is today. Where would you put yesterday? And where would you put tomorrow?" When English speakers are asked to do this, they nearly always point horizontally. But Mandarin speakers often point vertically, about seven or eight times more often than do English speakers. Even basic aspects of time perception can be affected by language. For example, English speakers prefer to talk about duration in terms of length (e.g., "That was a short talk," "The meeting didn't take long"), while Spanish and Greek speakers prefer to talk about time in terms of amount, relying more on words like "much" "big", and "little" rather than "short" and "long" Our research into such basic cognitive abilities as estimating duration shows that speakers of different languages differ in ways predicted by the patterns of metaphors in their language. (For example, when asked to estimate duration, English speakers are more likely to be confused by distance information, estimating that a line of greater length remains on the test screen for a longer period of time, whereas Greek speakers are more likely to be confused by amount, estimating that a container that is fuller remains longer on the screen.)5 An important question at this point is: Are these differences caused by language per se or by some other aspect of culture? Of course, the lives of English, Mandarin, Greek, Spanish, and Kuuk Thaayorre speakers differ in a myriad of ways. How do we know that it is language itself that creates these differences in thought and not some other aspect of their respective cultures? One way to answer this question is to teach people new ways of talking and see if that changes the way they think. English speakers were taught to use size metaphors (as in Greek) to describe duration (e.g., a movie is larger than a sneeze), or vertical metaphors (as in Mandarin) to describe event order. Once the English speakers had learned to talk about time in these new ways, their cognitive performance began to resemble that of Greek or Mandarin speakers. This suggests that patterns in a language can indeed play a causal role in constructing how we think. In practical terms, it means that when you're learning a new language, you're not simply learning a new way of talking, you are also inadvertently learning a new way of thinking. Beyond abstract or complex domains of thought like space and time, languages also meddle in basic aspects of visual perception — our ability to distinguish colors, for example. Different languages divide up the color continuum differently: some make many more distinctions between colors than others, and the boundaries often don't line up across languages. To test whether differences in color language lead to differences in color perception, we compared Russian and English speakers' ability to discriminate shades of blue. In Russian there is no single word that covers all the colors that English speakers call "blue." Russian makes an obligatory distinction between light blue (голубой) and dark blue (синий). Does this distinction mean that “синий” blues look more different from “голубой” blues to Russian speakers? Indeed, the data say yes. Russian speakers are quicker to distinguish two shades of blue that are called by the different names in Russian (i.e., one being синий and the other being голубой) than if the two fall into the same category. For English speakers, all these shades are still designated by the same word, "blue," and there are no comparable differences in reaction time. Further, the Russian advantage disappears when subjects are asked to perform a verbal interference task (reciting a string of digits) while making color judgments but not when they're asked to perform an equally difficult spatial interference task (keeping a novel visual pattern in memory). The disappearance of the advantage when performing a verbal task shows that language is normally involved in even surprisingly basic perceptual judgments — and that it is language that creates this difference in perception between Russian and English speakers. When Russian speakers are blocked from their normal access to language by a verbal interference task, the differences between Russian and English speakers disappear. Even what might be deemed frivolous aspects of language can have far-reaching subconscious effects on how we see the world. Take grammatical gender. In Spanish and other Romance languages, nouns are either masculine or feminine. In many other languages, nouns are divided into many more genders ("gender" in this context meaning class or kind). For example, some Australian Aboriginal languages have up to sixteen genders, including classes of hunting weapons, canines, things that are shiny, or, in the phrase made famous by cognitive linguist George Lakoff, "women, fire, and dangerous things." What it means for a language to have grammatical gender is that words belonging to different genders get treated differently grammatically and words belonging to the same grammatical gender get treated the same grammatically. Languages can require speakers to change pronouns, adjective and verb endings, possessives, numerals, and so on, depending on the noun's gender. For example, to say something like "my chair was old" in Russian (мой стул был стрый), you'd need to make every word in the sentence agree in gender with "chair" (стул), which is masculine in Russian. So you'd use the masculine form of "my," "was," and "old." These are the same forms you'd use in speaking of a biological male, as in "my grandfather was old." If, instead of speaking of a chair, you were speaking of a bed (кровать), which is feminine in Russian, or about your grandmother, you would use the feminine form of "my," "was," and "old." «Юрий Гагарин» [Yuri Gagarin] is very much «свой человек в России» [‘one of ours’ in Russia] still today. In honor of his «полёт в космос 12 (двенадцатого) апреля в 1961 (тысяча девятьсот шестьдесят первом) году» [flight into space on the 12th of April 1961] such posters like this one – and two more posted below in this post – went up all over Yekaterinburg. Am I the only girl who gets a little weak in the knees from his handsome Soviet farm boy looks? «Свой» [one’s; his; her; their] is a «притяжательное местоимение» [possessive pronoun] just like «мой» [my], «твой» [your (singular)], «наш» [our], «ваш» [your (plural)], «его» [his], «её» [her] and «их» [their]. Not all languages have this possessive pronoun – shout out to all you proud native speakers of English! – and that’s why it is not always clear when to use «свой» and when to use one of the others. Sometimes you might even wonder why Russian language would even need this possessive pronoun, when it has all the ones that English has and English seems to do just fine without «свой». Well, that’s a whole other conversation and for now I advice us all just to make peace with the fact that it exists and try to learn how to use it correctly. The key is to remember the following rule: «свой» is used when the possessor is the SUBJECT of the sentence. «Свой» changes according to the six cases of Russian languages very much like any other usual adjective ending on «-ой». Let’s have a look at a couple of examples of how to properly use «свой»: «Я беру свою сумку» [I take my bag]. «Ты берёшь свою сумку» [You take your bag]. «Она берёт свою сумку» [She takes her bag]. «Он берёт свою сумку» [He takes his bag]. «Мы знаем своё дело» [We know our thing]. «Вы знаете своё дело» [You know your thing]. «Они знают своё дело» [They know their thing]. «Возьми свой чек!» [Take (singular) your receipt!] «Возьмите свой чек!» [Take (plural) your receipt!] What happens to the sentence «она берёт свою сумку» if we replace «свою» with «её» [her]? To the untrained eye these two possessive pronouns both mean one and the same thing (especially when seen in translation): HER. Russian language is not that easy for the sentence «она берёт её сумку» [she takes her bag] will come to mean that she takes someone else’s bag, a bag belonging to another woman. «Свой» can thus save this poor unnamed woman from being suspected of the theft connected with using «её» in the last sentence (maybe she’s actually just trying to be helpful). Compare also the two following sentences: «Он позвонил своему брату» [He called his (own) brother]. «Он позвонил его брату» [He called his (somebody else’s) brother]. «Снова Гагарин…» [Gagarin once again…] But when to use «мой» instead of «свой» when speaking about oneself? That’s even trickier because the rule about always using «свой» when the possessor is also the SUBJECT of the sentence is not always followed by Russians themselves in colloquial speech. Russians often use «мой» when the possessor and subject of the sentence is «я» and «твой» when the possessor and subject is «ты». See for yourselves: This is correct: «Я позвонил своей сестре» [I called my sister]. This is common: «Я позвонил моей сестре» [I called my sister]. This is correct: «Ты закончил свою работу?» [Have you finished your work?] This is common: «Ты закончил твою работу?» [Have you finished your work?] And then there’s the trickiest part of all: in Russian possessive pronouns are not used when speaking about family members and relatives. That’s why the first two sentences are not correct at all – well, they’re alright grammatically and can be easily understood, but after all they have the word ‘sister’ in them, so you should just go ahead and skip any pronoun whatsoever: «Я позвонил сестре» [I called my sister]. The same goes for family words like «брат» [brother], «отец» [father], «мать» [mother], «дочь» [daughter], «сын» [son], «муж» [husband] and «жена» [wife]. Sometimes the leaving out of possessive pronouns will make a simple foreigner confused. Read this sentence for example: «Вчера отец сходил в кино с сестрой» [Yesterday my father went to the movies with (his or my?) sister]. In such cases as that one all you can truly hope for is that the context around the sentence will bring some clarity into whether the speaker’s father went to the movies with the speaker’s sister or with his own sister. Or ask them to use a possessive pronoun in which case you’ll hear one of the following two: «Вчера отец сходил в кино со своей сестрой» [Yesterday my father went to the movies with his sister]. «Вчера отец сходил в кино с моей сестрой» [Yesterday my father went to the movies with my sister]. Because father is both the subject and the possessor in the first sentence, you have to use «свой». But in the second sentence father is only the subject, whereas the person speaking is the ‘possessor’ of the sister. Got it? «Человек в космосе» [Man in space]. «Капитан первого звездолёта – наш, советский!» [The captain of the first space travel – our, Soviet!]. The title might as well have been «свой человек в космосе» [our man in space]… «Свой» is also used in Russian with the meaning of ‘one’s own’, when paired together with the subject of the sentence. This is not that hard. Think of how Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” is translated into Russian as «Своя комната» [lit.: “A Room of One’s Own”]. Sometimes it is also translated as «Собственная комната» – but the difference between these two titles is so small that it is really only a matter of taste which one you personally prefer. Have a look at a couple of examples: «У меня своя машина» [I have a car of my own]. «У нас свой дом» [We have a house of our own]. «У всякого свой вкус» [Everybody has their own taste]. And now for a question to the attentive reader – or just a reader not so attentive but keen on expressing «своё мнение» [one's; his; her; their opinion] – what is more positive: when Russians call you: a) «свой человек»; or b) «наш человек»? Or are both of them equally positive? P.S. I don’t know the right answer – that’s why I’m asking! I’ve been called mostly «наша» in Russia as a compliment, rarely «своя»… But somehow they both sound equally good to my ears. Does treating chairs as masculine and beds as feminine in the grammar make Russian speakers think of chairs as being more like men and beds as more like women in some way? It turns out that it does. In one study, we asked Russian and Kazakh speakers to describe objects having opposite gender assignment in those two languages. The descriptions they gave differed in a way predicted by grammatical gender. For example, when asked to describe a "key" — a word that is masculine in Kazakh and feminine in Russian — the Kazakh speakers were more likely to use words like "hard," "heavy," "jagged," "metal," "serrated," and "useful," whereas Russian speakers were more likely to say "golden," "intricate," "little," "lovely," "shiny," and "tiny." To describe a "bridge," which is feminine in Russian and masculine in English, the Russian speakers said "beautiful," "elegant," "fragile," "peaceful," "pretty," and "slender," and the English speakers said "big," "dangerous," "long," "strong," "sturdy," and "towering." This was true even though all testing was done in English, a language without grammatical gender. The same pattern of results also emerged in entirely nonlinguistic tasks (e.g., rating similarity between pictures). And we can also show that it is aspects of language per se that shape how people think: teaching English speakers new grammatical gender systems influences mental representations of objects in the same way it does with Russian and Kazakh speakers. Apparently even small flukes of grammar, like the seemingly arbitrary assignment of gender to a noun, can have an effect on people's ideas of concrete objects in the world. In fact, you don't even need to go into the lab to see these effects of language; you can see them with your own eyes in an art gallery. Look at some famous examples of personification in art — the ways in which abstract entities such as death, sin, victory, or time are given human form. How does an artist decide whether death, say, or time should be painted as a man or a woman? It turns out that in 85 percent of such personifications, whether a male or female figure is chosen is predicted by the grammatical gender of the word in the artist's native language. So, for example, German painters are more likely to paint death as a man, whereas Russian painters are more likely to paint death as a woman. The fact that even quirks of grammar, such as grammatical gender, can affect our thinking is profound. Such quirks are pervasive in language; gender, for example, applies to all nouns, which means that it is affecting how people think about anything that can be designated by a noun. That's a lot of stuff! There are some texts in Chinese language readers that are identified as constructing a discourse of cultural values. The discourse of cultural values and beliefs are constructed from five different perspectives, namely, concentration and diligence, respect for authority (government leaders and elders), modesty and tolerance, collective spirit, and honesty which are the most important values of Chinese nation. Concentration and Diligence These texts are designed to cultivate in children either the value of hard work, or the importance of concentration on study. While constructing this value, the texts deliberately rule out other possibilities (for example interest, curiosity, and motivation) as the following analysis shows. A Little Monkey One day, a little monkey went down the hill. When he came to a cornfield he saw many big corns in the field. He was pleased. He broke off a corn. With the corn on his shoulder he went ahead. When he came to a peach tree, he saw there were many big and red peaches on the tree. He was very glad. He threw away his corn and climbed up the tree to pick peaches. He got several peaches. When he came to a watermelon field, he saw the field was littered with many big and round watermelons. He was very excited. He threw away the peaches and began to pick watermelon. He carried a very big watermelon. On his way back, he saw a little rabbit hobbling around. He felt the rabbit would be lovely. He threw away his melon and began to chase the rabbit. The rabbit ran into a bush and disappeared. The little monkey had to go home with nothing in his hand. In this story a little monkey is the initiator of a series of actions. The actions are highly regulated in the story grammar structure: initial event, internal response, attempt, and consequence in each of the four paragraphs. The repetition of this story grammar structure (four times, enabling the teaching of high frequency verbs such as ‘‘come’’, ‘‘see’’, ‘‘throw away’’ and synonymous adjectives such as ‘‘pleased’’, ‘‘glad’’, ‘‘excited’’) depicts the little monkey repeating the four actions in the same pattern, which involve choices of four different objects. The choices are made based on mere emotion (pleased, glad, excited) rather than purpose or reasoning. The resolution or the didactic effect is that the little monkey has achieved nothing (went home empty handed). The didactic or moral is implicit, but not difficult for the child reader to infer: ‘‘If you want to achieve anything, you have to be purposeful or concentrate on one thing rather than do something out of emotion or out of mere interest’’. By nature, children are always curious about their surroundings and would try to experience different things that arouse their interest. By recognizing this characteristic, the story intends to tame the ‘‘savage mind’’ that is easily distracted by seemingly unnecessary objects. In order to emphasize the value of concentration on study, the story implicitly condemns children’s self-interest and natural curiosity about what happens around them, thus suppressing the creativity that is regarded as one of the most important educational goals in the recent education debate in China. Respect for Authority The authority is constructed as government leaders and elders. However, these kinds of power relations are also manifested in many other texts, though not the primary concerns of these texts, but embedded within the linguistic choices. The themes and orientations of the stories identified in this category overtly address the power of government leaders and elders. For example: Never Forget the Well-Digger There was a small village called Shazhouba outside Ruijin City. Chairman Mao once lived there when he led the revolution in Jiangxi Province. There was no well in the village. The villagers had to go a long distance out of the village to fetch water every day. Chairman Mao showed his concern for the hardship of the villagers. So he decided to dig a well in the village together with his soldiers and the villagers. After the well was dug, the villagers did not have to fetch water from a far-away place outside the village. After liberation, the villagers put up a stone tablet at the side of the well. Inscribed on the tablet is: ‘‘Never Forget the Well-Digger and Always Think of Chairman Mao When Drinking Water’’. (Yuwen Bianjishi, 1999, Vol. 2, pp. 111_/112) In this story the story grammar highlights the formal didactic relationships between Chairman Mao and the villagers. Chairman Mao is regulated as the initiator of an ‘‘attempt’’ while the villagers are the beneficiary of the ‘‘attempt’’. The villagers initiate the event but are unable to act. They have to wait for someone, in this case Chairman Mao, who has the reasoning power and sympathy to address the seemingly simple problem which had perplexed the villagers for years. The villagers are, in turn, positioned to be indebted to Mao by the ‘‘reaction’’ and ‘‘resolution’’ of the story. The ideology of the story is explicit, the government leader cares for ordinary people’s life and the ordinary people must, in return, feel grateful to the leader. The implicit ideology is, however, that the leader is more intelligent than the ordinary people are and, therefore, she/he is legitimized to have the power to rule. This kind of reasoning and discourse option is exercised throughout this and many other stories of government leaders in the textbooks. There are quite a few other stories in the text corpus that resemble the story just analyzed in terms of their story grammar structure and orientation. In these stories the main characters are the old government leaders and cultural elites (such as prominent writers, and scientists). Respect for them is constructed based on the same logic that ‘‘they served people, worked hard for the country, had a simple living style, and cared for ordinary people’’, therefore, they should be respected. It is obvious that the ideological intent is, on the one hand, to position the child reader to accept the established social power relations and, on the other hand, to legitimate the present government rule. Modesty and Tolerance The themes and orientations of these texts denounce arrogance and praise self-restraint. However, hidden in the semantic structures of the texts is the message that the status quo should be accepted and competition or will to change is discouraged. Modesty here means not to show oneself off or to be aggressive. Tolerance here does not mean the tolerance of different cultural values and beliefs that are promoted in the western education context; instead, it is tolerance of unfair treatment or even injustice in order to achieve harmony. While this may sound strange to non-Chinese, it is a core Confucian cultural value and belief. The government and cultural elites regard it as important and legitimate it in textbooks to socialize children to serve their purpose of control. The terms tolerance and modesty are different in terms of their connotations or/and themes in this context, but they are interrelated in terms of the purposes for or orientations with which they are constructed in the textbooks. The two cultural values and beliefs constructed in the textbooks are combined to socialize child readers to conform to be self-restrained and obedient citizens. For example, A Ceramic Jar and an Iron Jar There were two jars in an emperor’s kitchen. One was made of ceramic and the other was made of iron. The conceited iron jar looked down upon the ceramic jar. He often scoffed at the ceramic jar. ‘‘Dare you touch me? The earthen thing!’’ The iron jar asked arrogantly. ‘‘No. I dare not, Brother Iron Jar.’’ The ceramic jar replied modestly. ‘‘I know you are not that brave. A coward!’’ The iron jar said with an air of scorn contempt. ‘‘I dare not touch you. That’s for sure but I’m not a coward.’’ The ceramic jar replied and then reasoned: ‘‘We are both made to contain things for people, not to touch or knock against each other. As for the capacity for containing things, I am not inferior to you. Besides, . . .’’. ‘‘Shut up!’’ The iron jar became furious, ‘‘How dare you compare yourself with me! Wait and see, you’ll be broken into pieces in a few days. But I will be here forever.’’ ‘‘Why did you use such language? The ceramic jar said emotionally, ‘‘We’d better live in harmony. We have no reason to quarrel!’’ ‘‘I feel humiliated to live together with you. You are crap!’’ The iron jar said, ‘‘I will break you into pieces one day!’’ The ceramic jar didn’t reply. As time flew . . . a lot had happened in the world . . . . The two jars were abandoned in a desolate land and covered with thick remains and dust. One day, some people came and dug the remains and dust. They found the ceramic jar. ‘‘Oh, here is a jar!’’ one man said with a surprise. ‘‘Yes, it is a ceramic jar!’’ others cried out excitedly. They picked it up, poured out the dust and earth and washed it. It was as bright, beautiful and natural as it used to be in the royal kitchen many years ago. ‘‘How beautiful the jar is!’’ one man said, ‘‘Be careful! Don’t break it! This is an ancient relic. It is invaluable.’’ ‘‘Thank you so much!’’ The ceramic jar said with excitement, ‘‘my brother, the iron jar is lying beside me. Please dig him out. He must be very bored for such a long time.’’ People began to dig but they couldn’t find it after they had searched all the area. The iron jar had rusted away long ago. In this particular story two traditional Chinese kitchen containers, the iron jar and the ceramic jar, are personified to instantiate a structured pattern of conflict. The physically strong (symbolized by the iron jar) are represented as arrogant, enacting unfair treatment, while the physically weak (symbolized by the ceramic jar) are portrayed as tolerant, tolerating the unfair treatment. The pattern is basically realized by the verbal interactions between the two jars. The iron jar is constructed purposefully as the initiator of the incident: he launches a series of unfair verbal attacks on the ceramic jar (such as The earthen thing, A coward, Shut up, I feel humiliated . . .). The ceramic jar is constructed as the addressee and the victim of the verbal attack. Faced with the unfair treatment, the ceramic jar does not challenge the attacker with anger or offence, instead he firstly reasons with his attacker politely, and then keeps silent (such as I dare not, Brother, we are both made to . . ., we are brothers). The schematic structure of the verbal interactions, designed to enable the child reader to recognize what are acceptable or unacceptable sociolinguistic utterances, has a dramaturgical effect; the reiterated attempt_/consequence_/attempt_/consequence pattern is self-referential and self-reinforcing with an orientation highlighting the approved social behaviour of modesty and tolerance and denouncing the antisocial behaviour of arrogance and unfair treatment to others. The orientation is also supported by the linguistic choice of commentary words on the interactions. If the commentary words of the above interactions are categorized as ‘‘pejorative’’, ‘‘neutral’’, and ‘‘positive’’, it is readily seen that of the semantic items or expressions, there are no neutral words used, instead all those commenting on the iron jar’s utterances are pejorative, whereas those commenting on the ceramic jar’s utterances are positive (see Table 1). These words or expressions are used formally as cohesive links between the verbal utterances of the above interactions. However, they also communicate their functions. All the utterances of the iron jar are pejorative expressions, whereas all the utterances of the ceramic jar are positive expressions. Through these lexical choices, the iron jar’s verbal and social behaviors are confirmed as antisocial, while the ceramic jar’s are socially beneficial. Collective Spirit These texts are intertextually related, in terms of theme and orientation, to teach children that happiness or satisfaction comes from helping or serving others in particular or society in general. In this sense, the value and belief are universal, not specific to Chinese society. For example, ‘‘group work’’, ‘‘team work’’, and ‘‘cooperative personality’’ are popular concepts based on the value and belief of collective spirit. However, the meaning of collective spirit constructed in the textbooks concerned goes far beyond the common sense usage. It is constructed against ‘‘the self ’’ or ‘‘individuality’’ that is the very base, I believe, on which collective spirit is supposed to prevail. Put simply, collective spirit is rendered in the discourse being examined as equivalence to self-denial. She Is My Friend One day in wartime, there were several artillery shells that exploded in an orphanage. Two children were killed and several were injured. Among the injured there was a girl.When hearing the news, doctors and nurses rushed in with first aid from a nearby hospital. Through examination, they confirmed that the girl’s wound was the most serious. She would die from loss of blood if she could not receive an immediate blood transfusion. However, the blood of all the doctors and nurses did not match her blood type. The only way was to find out which of the uninjured children might match her blood type and donate blood for her. A woman doctor then told the children that the girl would die if she could not receive a blood transfusion. Then she asked whether any one of them would be willing to donate blood. After a silence, one hand was put up, then withdrawn, and put up again. ‘‘Thank you.’’ The doctor said, ‘‘What’s your name?’’ ‘‘Yuan Heng.’’ The boy called Yuan Heng quickly lay down on the table. During the process of blood transfusion, Yuan Heng did not move and did not say anything. After a while, he suddenly began to cry and covered his face with his hands. ‘‘Does it hurt?’’, the doctor asked. Yuan Heng shook his head but still sobbed. He closed his eyes and bit his lip, trying hard to refrain from sobbing . . . After the transfusion, the doctor told people around: ‘‘The boy thought he would die. He thought he would die after he gave all his blood to the girl.’’ ‘‘Then why is he willing to donate his blood when he thinks that the donation can cause his death?’’ The doctor turned to ask the boy the question. The boy answered: ‘‘She is my friend.’’ The setting of this story is a war time one and the initial event is ‘‘an injured girl needed blood transfusion in order to survive’’. The sequence of attempt and consequence of the story involves the protagonist (Yuan Heng) who volunteered to donate blood in the mistaken idea that he would die because of the donation, and the injured girl was saved. Through this sequence, the cultural value of sacrificing oneself for others is conveyed to the child reader. Embedded in this sequence are the sub-attempts (hesitation: ‘‘One hand had been put up, then withdrawn, and put up again’’; fear: ‘‘began to cry’’) and consequences (determination: ‘‘quickly lay down on the table’’, ‘‘did not move or speak’’; understanding: stopped sobbing). These sub-attempts and consequences portray the protagonist as a real hero and, hence, enable the child reader to believe that the story is true. Additionally, they build up a suspense that orients the child reader to the end of the story, where the moral is spelt out by the interactions between the doctor and the protagonist. In particular, the ways in which the story grammar is presented contribute to the construction of the cultural value and belief and so encode one of the dominant cultural values and beliefs, collective spirit, as important to the government and cultural elite. In this text and others children are constructed as agents who enact the collective spirit. The inclusion of children as agents creates a subjective position for child readers to identify themselves with the protagonists or heroes practice of collective spirit. In other words, they are positioned to learn from the moral models. As noted at the beginning of this section, the discourse builds up the logic and rationale for the cultural value and belief on the premise that self-interest should be suppressed inorder to practise collective spirit. Honesty The themes of the texts range from not telling lies to not accepting what does not belong to you. Honesty is important to any society. It is a universal value and belief that is cherished and promoted. The meaning of honesty is clear, rendering further explanation unnecessary, so let’s turn to the text and see how the discourse is constructed in the textbooks. A Story of the Axe A long, long time ago, there was a poor boy. One day, he went to the mountain to cut firewood. He dropped his axe into a river by accident when he crossed the river over a single wood bridge. He was so worried that he burst into tears. He sobbed: ‘‘How can I cut fire wood without the axe!’’ Suddenly an old white-beared grandpa came out of the flowing water and asked with care: ‘‘Whose child is crying so sadly?’’ The boy said: ‘‘Grandpa, I dropped my axe into the river. I cannot cut fire wood!’’ The grandpa said: ‘‘Don’t cry, child! I’ll help you to find it.’’ While talking, he went into the river and came out with a golden axe. He asked: ‘‘Is this your axe?’’ The boy said: ‘‘No, it is not.’’ The grandpa went into the river again and came out with a silver axe. He asked: ‘‘Is this yours?’’ The boy shook his head, saying: ‘‘No, it is not mine.’’ The grandpa went into the river again and came up with an iron axe. He asked: ‘‘Is this your axe?’’ The boy said gladly: ‘‘Yes, it is mine. Thank you, Grandpa!’’ The grandpa smiled and said: ‘‘Child, since you are honest, I give the other two axes to you too.’’ The boy said: ‘‘Grandpa, they are not mine. I cannot accept them.’’ The boy took his own axe and went away. Looking at the boy’s disappearing figure, the grandpa nodded his head with a smile. Again, the story grammar consists of a repetition of a macro propositional sequence: initial event, internal response, attempt, and consequence. However, the sequence is realized by an intersubjective verbal exchange between the two protagonists, the poor child and the old man rather than mere physical actions, building up child reader’s expectations of outcomes and providing maximum opportunities for the teaching of simple questions and answers as well as direct speech. Through the repetition of ‘‘attempt and consequence’’, the poor boy’s honesty is tested: ‘‘never to take anything that does not belong to you’’. This moral lesson is further confirmed by the resolution at the end of the story ‘‘Grandpa nodded his head with a smile’’. Across this text and many others in the text corpus the discourse appears and reappears through different themes or aspects to emphasize the meaning of honest behaviour. These texts build up a version of the world where honest behaviour is conducted by adults; children are likely to go astray and, therefore, need to be supervised by adults. At the same time, they use textual and rhetorical devices to position the child reader in solidarity with the adults and the ideal child who performs honest acts and, hence, child readers might learn to behave in a like manner and take the same moral road. The attitudinal orientation is further reinforced and extended by the last paragraph, where the resolution of the story is intentionally spelt out: if you are modest and tolerant of unfair treatment, you survive in society, whereas you cannot survive if you are arrogant and treat others unfairly. This moral lesson is elaborated by means of a timespan based on the common knowledge (or designed to teach it as such) that cultural relics are invaluable objects. The elaboration (Paragraph 3) covers almost the same length as the main story (Paragraph 2). By this choice, the text orientates the child reader to its ideological resolution. Again, interactions are the main textual devices, but this time the generic term ‘‘people’’ is used to initiate the interactions. This choice sets up an authoritative position that enables what ‘‘people’’ say appear to be a kind of common knowledge. Accordingly, the child reader is positioned to interpret the social behaviour of the ceramic jar as ‘‘beautiful’’ 0/‘‘don’t break it’’ 0/ ‘‘it is invaluable’’. The responses of the ceramic jar in the interactions ‘‘Thank you so much’’, and ‘‘My brother iron jar is lying beside me. Please dig him out’’ further show how tolerant the ceramic jar is towards unfair treatment, and the disappearance (rusted away) of the iron jar confirms that the iron jar’s antisocial behaviour cannot last. By using a long timespan, the value of tolerance is established as enduring over time. This value is constructed intertextually through a series of texts in the textbooks. |
2.1. Determination of Kazakh and Russian World Pictures through the contextual analysis of Folklore.
Kazakh and Russian mentalities have common notions about debt of honor, matter of honor, conscience, justice, merit, hospitality, ability to emphasize with another’s grief and others.
Let’s consider Russian concept “честь”, and its conformity in Kazakh language. Russian concept of “honor” has 10 Kazakh translations. Thus, only one word -ар-намыс- translates only with the same “честь” , in other two cases “honor” is the leader from other ten : words ар ұят, ождан, besides the notion “honor” include the notion “honesty”. It is possible to say, that in above-named two translations of the concept “honor” and “conscience” assume each other. In other seven Kazakh correspondences of Russian concept “honor” this word keeps definite place in the system of synonymic translations.
Let’s consider the conformity of these groups of translations in that sequence in which they are given in Bektaevs’ dictionary:
Абиыр - advantage, reputation, conscience, honour;
Абырой - authority, prestige, reputation, conscience, honour;
Ар - vanity, conscience, shame, honour;
Мерей - prestige, honour, laurels, success, happiness, pleasure, authority;
Мәртебе - prestige, honour, glory, degree, advantage, a rank, the status;
Намыс - honour, vanity, conscience, self-respect;
Құрмет - honour, honour, respect, respect, honour.
In one case - намыс - the concept "honour" is the core among four transfers. In following two cases - мерей, мәртебе - the concept "honour" occupies the second for the importance among close concepts. Thus, among 10 transfers - conformity in six cases leader is the value "honour”. However we do not aspire to establish only a parity of transfers Kazakh and Russian concept "honour". The big interest represents structure revealing концепта "honour" in the Kazakh picture of the world in comparison with the similar Russian concept. We are assured, that in both compared languages concept "honour" appears included in the wide combinative communications having the logic and substantiation.
Valency of the concept “honor” permits to single out obligatory, in our opinion, combinations to have honor, to lose honor, to confer honor. Thus, each of making Kazakh translations of Russian concept “honor” in one or another way joins in the given combinations. The analysis of the above-stated combinations can help to reveal the components of the concept “honor” in Kazakh and Russian languages.
Concept “honor” assumes components “conscience, advantage, shame”, logically joined in combination “to have honor=to have conscience, advantage, shame”. Accordingly, person who unscrupulous, shameless is disgraceful person, that is “honor” corresponds with абиыр, абырой, ар, ар-ұят, мәртебе, намыс, ождан. In naive-ethical views of Russian and Kazakh people the concept of "honour" is directly connected with value «honour, respect» and has universal character.
This understanding has something in common with philosophical definition of concept "honour": a recognition which associates with the bearer of these qualities. Possessing honour and, accordingly, all above-named moral qualities, it is worthy respect and, as consequence, deserves/has «authority, reputation, glory, prestige». In this respect Russian концепт "honour" corresponds with Kazakh абиыр
,
абырой
,
мерей
,
мәртебе.
Thus, components of "honour" are authority, prestige, reputation, glory act as the deserved estimation of high moral qualities of the person. In this connection, it is possible to speak about honour on merits: for deserving honour, person should possess high moral qualities. In this case, the authority, prestige, reputation, glory, honour can have constant character. For the same who does not possess such qualities, honour cannot be rendered: not everyone allowed sitting in sacred place (sacred - an image, a place of honour in the Russian house); honour on merits. Both the authority, and prestige, both reputation, and glory become passing, time, lose the value if honour appears to the person who is not deserving it: честь честью а славы нет
;
жаман
жігіт
жолдасын
жауға
алғызар
,
өзін
үятқа
қалғызар.
People especially underline necessity to perceive and estimate given honour with dignity. The same who was not able to make it, were derided: дай бог тому честь, кто умеет ее снесть; припала было честь, да не умел ее снесть.
As semantic equivalent concept “reputation, honest reputation, honor” has high moral, ethical value, consequently it should be highly kept by person. Given conditions are reflected in national proverbs: честь
ум
рождает
,
а
бесчестье
и
последний
отнимает
;
береги
честь
смолоду; аќылың
болса
арыңды
сақта
,
ар
-
ұят
керек
әр
уақытта.
Honour in national philosophy has very high price: it that, for what it is not a pity to give heads (life) also
за
честь
голова
гибнет
;
честь
головою
оберегают. Loss of the honor for Russian and the Kazakh is more terrible than death:
лучше
честь
,
нежели
зол
живот
;
бесчестье
хуже
смерти
;
хоть
плетьми
высеки
,
только
чести
не
лишай
;
ерді
намыс
өлтірер
;
өлімнен
ұят
күшті. At the same time, in consciousness of people there is a distinct understanding that given recognition and respect require high responsibility from its bearer: больше почет, больше хлопот; чем больше чести, тем больше напасти; велик почет не живет без хлопот.
Hereby, comparison of the concept “honor” in Kazakh and Russian languages permits us to speak about the proximity of absolute ethic values, about similarity of their perception in Russian and Kazakh ethno cultures.
Cultural-creative identification of Kazakh ethnos, as other ancient nations, realized through art. Nomadic community of Kazakhs evolved over the period of long history from the matriarchy to patriarchal system, from the period of military democracy to early forms of feudalism. But the main peculiarity of the nomads that their specific way of life organization doesn’t change through centuries. Traditional Kazakh art (musically-poetical, specifically aitys and epos, artistic-applied, decorative) be found in high level of development.
In folkloric works utilitarian facility is inseparable from esthetic. It’s the result of synthesis, which put together integral outlook of human society, including ethnos.
It is impossible to forget that Kazakhs were successors of sociocultural communities in which life the leading place occupied a nomadic economy.
The Kazakh musical art is traditionally solo. The main characteristic of traditional music is that for long time it was left unwritten. Oral musical art of Kazakhs has left a certain mark also on interrelations of the artist-executor and an audience, removing any contradictions between way of an existing art and its internal essence. Here the musician is the artist creating "publicly".
Integrity of world perception, inherent in nomadic world view, is clearly represented in aitys- song competition of akyns. Aitys is builds under the artistic-esthetic empathy of akyn and listeners. In aitys the creative process is fixed. “Imagination, fantasy creates such a reality when interior freedom of the person is in inseparable connection with the free spirit of aitys creates an integral world picture. In conditions of oral culture artistic-poetic gift was one of the possibilities of persons’ formation”
World view of ancient Kazakhs reflected in traditional mythology. Mythological thinking is an early stage of ethical relation toward the world. In Kazakh folklore mythologems about world creation are incarnated (beautiful, harmonious or featureless, elevated or ordinary), which closely connected with the lifestyle of steppe inhabitants.They transferred terrestrial orientation to heaven world in space and time and occupied it with animals from the real environment. The natural world sensually perceived, - one of the bases on which the national attitude of the nomad has grown. Each nation have a landscape in which perception of cultural traditions (steppe and mountains) refract. In ancient Kazakh art steppe is an image of terrestrial life, mountain is a symbol of greatness. Water is a dead kingdom. The nomadic elements gave sensation of a variety, promoted an openness, fastening of the active beginning as attitude element. Therefore «the person is the centre of the immense world, not the tiny point which has got lost in it, and its part, same immense and powerful, as an eternal sky, boundless steppes, open spaces which you will not capture at once»
The Kazakh magic fairy tale became original synthesis of mythological aesthetic representations of the most ancient times. In myths, in fairy tales dreams of ancient people of conquest of natural forces were reflected. In fairy tales are embodied animistic and cosmogonic representations of forefathers of the Kazakh ethnos. In them totemism, \fetishism, a taboo, shamanism, a cult of ancestors are present as ways of attitude and outlook, as a way of life. In fairy tales Nature is occupied by demons. Occurrence of demons marks new quality of the human relation to the nature: care, fear, sensation of the powerlessness before mysterious and terrible elements.
Therefore in fairy tales is narrated about space pursuits, prosecutions; cosmogonic motives were embodied in representation about the general stream of a life in which there was an earth and heavenly bodies, there were animals and people. The idea of general transformation of one in another, cultivation of ancient beliefs about resettlement of souls is very popular in fairy tales. The magic in the Kazakh ancient fairy tales is a magic first of all things: hair, a wool, stones and magic of elements, first of all fire. Fire is omnipotent: it is necessary to burn a feather of bird Samryk - and hero leaves the trouble. Shamanism - worship the sky, the moon, the sun, honouring totems - patrons of ancestors, calling spirits is present in fairy tales as means of wish achievement.
However the main theme of art, a source of pleasure, experience fine (or awful) is a nature.
"Sekirtpe" (‘Playful’). A folk song from Eastern Kazakhstan, sung by Klara Tulenbaeva (b. 1976) accompanying herself on the syrnai.
My
aul
is on the bank of Ak Kemer.
I am a glorious snowdrop among my six brothers.
However much you whip your horse, my darling,
You will never catch me.
Flowers, flowers...
Let your face sparkle with carefree laughter.
My precious one in a golden gown with pearly buttons.
All the girls around you bow their heads before you.
Gakku-goi, gakku-goi, sing to this tune!
"Altyn altai" (‘The Golden Altai’). A folk lyric with music composed by
Edil Huseinov (b. 1955), a composer, performer and researcher who is
restoring and revitalizing archaic Kazakh instruments and their music.
I will take zhetygen and sing a song with deep meaning.
The Golden Altai is my native land.
I am longing for my homeland,
My treasure, inherited from my forefathers,
I cannot forget you, golden Altai,
I long for my motherland.
The originality of attitude of that time was expressed by ethnos in evolution of folklore consciousness. There is the most ancient literary genre - the epos idealising a person as a carrier of exclusive energy and force, as hero. Centuries-old process of occurrence and evolution of epic forms of Kazakhs covers the period of an is patriarchal-patrimonial system (including feudal). Epic art is cosmological, an image of the general prevails, person is not individualised, does not resist to the nature, a patrimonial generality, ethnos, tradition. The mythology feeding the epos, focused on integrity of life, harmony of the person and the nature, the person and the world.
In the epos all fantastic is represented as real-life. The life fundamental principle - elements of water, the earth, air, fire is sensually perceived, they generate space and natural integrity, and each natural phenomenon reflects harmony or disharmony of space. In Kazakh epos there is no space and time division. Features of epic attitude reveal in the grandness of images. Space comparisons are monumental. In the epos the idea of equivalence of person and world ripens. For epic attitude of Kazakhs the feeling of movement, a way is characteristic.
The Kazakh epos became the original encyclopaedia of a nomadic life, image of real events of a life of ethnos, customs, customs. In an epic genre direct lines of a life, attitude have got character is universal-typical. Multidimensional structures of is art-shaped development of the world, metaphorical, allegorical, mythological receptions are used. The life and the nature are poeticized:
И помчал его конь вперед.
Конь пространство, как воду, пьет.
Вихрем мчит его по степи.
Or:
Байчубар быстрее летел:
Он вытягивался струной,
Воздух он разрывал стрелой,
Ветер громко в ушах свистел
У батыра и у коня
In epic legends the nature much can clear, underline in the person. The condition of the hero, feature of its character are transferred through natural phenomena. Emotions are rectilinear, unpretentious, общи, are abstract. There is no psychologism, there is no scale of experiences. The inwardness of the hero reveals in subject display. The natural phenomena are so bright, impressive and visible, that become identical to the world of emotions and moods of the hero.
The unification of the person and the nature is transferred by means of an image of affinity of the epic hero to fruitful and powerful Mother Nature, merges to it in a uniform stream of a life. The sun becomes expression of the life-giving beginning. Alpamys is born together with a dawn rising in the east, with sunrise Kozy-Korpesh has grown, his life has returned to him in three days. The death is not dated for a decline. The grief is compared to a black cloud, anger - with night darkness. The aesthetic feeling of the nature at ancient Kazakhs has been developed strongly what testify «Alpamys», "Koblandy-batyr", "Kambar-batyr". Echoes of a primitive identification of the person with fauna are surprisingly poetical zoomorphic comparisons in which the mythological basis of a sight at beauty is traced.
Character of estimated social stereotypes depends on set of factors of socially-demographic, national-cultural characteristics, educational level of an individual, etc. So, axiomatic orientations of habitants of cities and villages,the Western Europe and Central Asia, young and old, men and the women, rich and poor do not coincide. Americans on the foreground put forward personal success and financial well-being; Russian, on Vezhbitsky, aspire to unification, their feeling of a collectivism is strongly developed; for Kazakhs and for people of the Central Asia the respect of related relations, honouring of seniors, following to traditions and customs of the nation, as a whole, is characteristic.
The nature in the epos is still described in traditions of a myth, but there is a crisis at its perception. Any more grandness of natural phenomena, and new foreshortenings of perception of the world, pleasure of life, полнокровности lives start all to appear more clearly in epic legends. It marks attitude change, interest to the nature, vitally simple and ordinary. Landscape descriptions become more detailed. The world around is considered in space: the nomad perceived the world, steppe, as a circle. The Kazakh epos is historical. The mythological picture of the world is combined with its poetic perception in colourful and plastic variety. Evolution of aesthetic vision of the world has led to its new perception. So, in characteristic motive for the Kazakh epos - - the new relation to the nature is expressed protection of animals. Finds force motive of life-giving dialogue of the person with the nature world.
However in a reconstruction of complete shape of the nature flexibility, plasticity remains. Already in an antiquity the landscape was the major form of comprehension of generality of life. In this genre the relentlessness of the eternal nature in relation to feebleness of the person was quite often underlined. Pleasure, a disinterested admiring, sensation of completeness and pleasure of life, delight, triumph, pleasure and, on the contrary, grief, grief, melancholy, indignation - all this scale of feelings, moods, propensities and liking of the person became in the Kazakh epos means of development of the nature in all originality and originality of its displays. In the beginning it meant ability to be guided in space that demanded, besides knowledge of the terrestrial natural phenomena, studying of movement of heavenly bodies.
What were representations of the Kazakh epos about infinite? In-contemplation of the nature the person had no business with really infinite. It seized only psychologically equivalent to the infinite: a distance of heavens, open space of steppes, i.e. Space to which there is a limit. But contemplation of this prospect lost in a distance caused feeling of infinity. Not infinite time, not eternity of the Universe, but only rather far prospect. The psychological effect of the infinite arises from transferring of visible infinity on the validity. It arises at contemplation of open spaces of steppes, heavens, the star sky.
That it was possible to recognise works of art art and aesthetically true, Gegel put forward idea about necessity to get used the artist «in spirit of last times and another's people», understanding of the main thing, that «occupied thoughts and soul of the people, for it substantive in an epoch and the people if it only originally, remains clear for all times» [12]. Self-identification, formation of national character became these substantive in the heroic epos of the Kazakh ethnos historical and cultural and sociocultural. The system of sights at the world which underlies the epos of the Kazakh nomadic society, became an element of traditional consciousness of the Kazakh ethnos [13].
From a myth and the epos the descriptive manner of the story, the contemplate relation to the nature, space, person, world order, representation about fine as harmonies, metaphoricalness and hyperbole art consciousness, culture as a whole, the contrast image of life [14], respect by the way, moral dominants of culture have entered into a flesh and blood of national consciousness of Kazakhs. Epic heroes, folklore plots became poetic symbolics of national consciousness of the Kazakh ethnos. Organic communication of folklore, national tradition with literary art creativity [15] has created original aura of translation and accumulation of mythological and epic motives by the Kazakh national mentality. The present of a myth sings of the ethnos world - the human world, greatness of business of the person belonging to this ethnos; the nature appears as a sphere of action of the person, it is a life in unity with the individual, past and present communication: « Landscape»myths allow to feel communication with history.
The historical landscape appears as intelligent life, the certificate of greatness of the world, movement of time, continuity of generations. The idea of a current of time, relay race of generations, pride and admiration of descendants, historical prospects in movement of human life feed modern national consciousness. «Complete view on the nature, its beauty and the harmony, transferred by previous generations in the form of a continuous chain of oral legends, songs, legends, ethical creations is necessary for the person of XX century. In them there is a place to gods and heroes, customs and beliefs, reflexions about destinies of the world and the person, and also all to best of spiritual experience of centuries, an originality of outlook of ancient, their aspirations and hopes» [16].
It is impossible to forget that national images of the world of the Kazakhs, transferred through the oral nomadic culture which has left the most appreciable trace in national mentality and psychology, speech, figurative, behavioural stereotypes mismatch in many respects to a pragmatism of a present life [17]. Character of the nomad, bent for to free pastime, the regular life which has been not burdened by requirement and necessity of hourly work is felt. There is no feeling of personal benefit, self-interest, barefaced individualism. And at the same time the internal spiritual culture, vital necessity of open space, immunity to narrowness, requirement to see in the dwelling microcosm of Universe is ineradicable. All it mismatches modern rates of an industrial civilisation in its western variant. From here discomfort, "intensity" of consciousness of ethnos, its emotional condition.
In due time the ZH.-item Sartre in « Sketch of the theory of emotions» has entered the concept of "uneasy consciousness», which much explains in a situation of emotional perception and world vision. It starts with representation about emotion as complete expression of a human reality which is self-sufficient and самоценна in the estimation of the world, in the relation to it. On Sartre, «the uneasy consciousness» is the emotion understood as meaning phenomenon and designating such type meaning the phenomenon of life (it the person is) which gives sense to the existence, to an act, updating, estimates them. Emotion in this situation becomes image of "magically focused behaviour of the person in the difficult and ambiguous world. With reference to ethnos in national consciousness the mentality carries out function of designing of a harmonious national image of the world not rational, not logic means, and means of spiritual symbolization, art culture of ethnos. Such updating assumes transformation of national culture. The world of national culture appears as unity of the natural and social validity in the field of activity of the person and as unity of these spheres in time of culture of the ethnos, connected with type of activity of the person and increase of value of time.
Time of national culture opens diachronic cut of cultural-historical evolution, fixes specificity of correlation "time-nature-society-person", specificity of connection of objective and subjective time rhythms of ability to live as they were differently shown in various civilisations, within the limits of concrete historical time. Within the limits of local societies always there is аритмия, a discrepancy of time forms and existence of its components: individuals, their ability to live, conditions of this ability to live. Time of national culture is manyvectoral: person masters rhythms of own, natural and social life and retrospective and perspective. Convertibility of time can become way of association of cultural phenomena occurring at different times, enriching it.
Original representations about time are inherent in the nomadic people. Time for the nomad not vector, but cyclic. Interestingly not time current, and that in it occurs, time - not empty activity, and the interval of a life filled with events. With concept of recurrence of time representation about indissoluble communication of the past, present, future communicates also. Traditions and customs are the past living in the present: the generation is possibility to feel as communication between the present and future. For the Kazakh folklore the openness of art time, combination in айтысе, the epos several time numbers is characteristic at once.
In the Kazakh folklore past and present synthesis acts as an integrated whole. The ancestors which for a long time have died, constantly exist in consciousness live, helping or counteracting them. Time is perceived in a statics, нелинейно, heroes always remain young, two actions cannot be depicted simultaneously if they are made in two places by two various characters. The static perception of time defines ethical and aesthetic estimations and characteristics. The hero remains to them up to the end as well negative up to the end will be negative.
«The unity of perception of time has defined integrity of an ideal of the steppe soldier - the protagonist of medieval Kazakh poetry. A life - for the sake of terrestrial pleasures, destruction - for the sake of fight» [18]. Deviations from this norm cannot be. Worthy the one who will appear in fight by the first, - such drew legend and legend ancestors. The constant appeal to ancestors, to the past rich with nice events as to the standard, has caused extraordinary optimism of medieval Kazakh poetry. During crisis of a nomadic society - disintegration of Golden Horde, conflicts between the khanates which have arisen on its fragments, civil strifes - the understanding of time in unity of the past and the present has disappeared. There is no already former optimism, prospects of the future do not promise anything good. There are new values: not daring and courage, not pleasure by terrestrial pleasures, and work, knowledge, mind, kindness. There are elements of criticism of the modern validity.
«The new perception of time which has put forward a new ideal of the person... Stands out through creativity of poets XVIII-XIX centuries and marks a birth of the new literature, its the first, still uncertain steps» [19]. For the Kazakh oral literature art time is characteristic. In it time numbers can be combined some. Time is not limited by certain limits, it covers during a short instant the historical events which have left on time in an extreme antiquity, and not so old events, and simultaneously proceeding with it. The oral form did time changeable, there was a free transition from one event to another. The orientation of time and its type are defined by expansion of figurative thought of the subject who has been not constrained by any chronological frameworks. Often spatial width compensates conciseness, brevity of time or, on the contrary, spatial limitation is compensated by time expansion.
The figurative model of the world [20] which have arisen in folklore and the oral literature of Kazakhs, in the is art-time structure has emotional and rational sense. The art space bears the certain information - the function necessary for art such. The image of road has huge value not only because in it the unity of existential definitions acts most clearly but also because the space becomes concrete, is sated with time, real vital sense. Road - a life measure. Not only road-mission, but also road as alternative of good or harm. The art space, containing images of mountains, steppes, the sky, “correlates with qualitatively essential, lasting time, transferring space nomadic in unity of its objective existential co-ordinates”
It is one of examples of rapprochement of concept and an image when conceptual representations about time and space and perceptual representations about time and space make sanguineous complete unity »[21]. This chronology became a basis of creation of an image of art space and time in the Kazakh literature. For it are typical (in particular, it concerns prose) constant switchings of a literary narration from the past in the present, allowing to connect sketches from nature to descriptions of philosophico-historical and moral-ethical character. Art time and space are safely designed. Correlation and combination of various historical epoch, resettlement and collision of time layers, spatial jumps - here the major lines of existential transformations in the national literature of the Kazakh ethnos.
Various existential transformations, as well as diverse forms of art convention, serve the purpose of art development of the validity. For the Kazakh literature the is art-philosophical maintenance where the authentic intertwines with a myth where the heroic legend borders on steadfast moral-psychological research [22] is characteristic. Many modern products are deprived spatial and time limitation. Existential scale and universalism are similar to the cosmogonic designs peculiar to most ancient mythological thinking. Universal spirituality, communication of space with a human microcosm, eternity with momentary caducity pull together these products with мифопоэтическими the representations fixed in ancient monuments of verbal art.
Historical time adjoins with mythological and is often opposed mythological as a reality - ancient and not growing old dream of mankind. Language of ethnos, its paint, is art-graphic norms very difficultly give in to transformation. Remain constants and the figurative means born in bowels of traditional outlook [23]. All system of figurative thinking, aesthetic representations of the people depends on system of customs, from the traditions developed in compliance with features of the ability to live. The mental warehouse and national character are shown in national art and the literature in the form of original lines of national culture which often clothe in forms of customs and traditions. Eposes "Kyz-Zhibek", «Kozy-Korpesh and the Bayan Suly», for example, is a history, a life, customs of nomadic Kazakhs. Therefore for the Kazakh literature having rich orally-poetic tradition, development of the poetry which is based on oral addition, on improvisation [24] was quite natural. The art tradition of folklore, oral poetic creativity is rich and various. But as in it the outlook of ancient Kazakh ethnos is reproduced, it owing to the epical, mythological produces rather conditional descriptions [25].
The originality of a way of life of ethnos in many respects defines also an originality of its art thinking. Dependence of the Kazakh language, more precisely, dependence of is figurative-speech means on attitude and attitude of the people is found out practically in all spheres of the use of figurative speech. It has affected the sound nature of speech, on spatial designations [26]. Traces of a national mentality, especially Kazakh concepts and representations are appreciable in turns of speech, metaphors, the Kazakh poetry about the earth and waters, about steppe and mountains, about the nature and nomads. «The tradition is expressed tested, habitual to the national thinking, graphic receptions corresponding to national aesthetic tastes and all riches of a national language» [27].
So, the inner world of Kazakhs is transferred in steady, habitual for traditional consciousness and folklore tradition epithets, turns: a white beam, a light wish, warm blessing, moonlike, a white dome etc. At the same time with the black intentions, black earth, black night, a black stone - the words creating emotional colouring and perception. In language the comparisons connected with the phenomena, by the closest to a life of Kazakhs, - the nature, livestock, in general fauna are used. A hyperbole - one of traditional receptions of the Kazakh epos. The properties inherent in ancient oratory of Kazakhs, - the distant approach, a hint, allegorical meaning, and sometimes and direct speech - are present practically at all literary works.
History of the Kazakh poetry - the evident certificate of how traditional concepts of ethnos reflect a life, acts, feelings of individuals traditional forms. In it the reflexion, instructive maxims, morals questions (kindly and angrily), a family, a life, the relation to the woman etc. prevail. To a social problematics the Kazakh poetry addressed much less often, only during the special historical periods, for example in country revolt under the guidance of Isatai Taimanov and Mahambet Otemisov and, of course, during the epoch of Abai. During such periods social interests of poets (Byhar, Shortanbai, Myrat, Sherniaz, Maxambet, Syinbai, etc.) become aggravated. It gets thematic riches only since the time of Abai. Everyday philosophy, didacticism of Kazakh poetry have predetermined its function of the compiler of traditional sights at humanity, nobleness, harm, violence, etc.
Childbirth and genres of the Kazakh literature have the folklore and mythological memory. Folklore products stand and at sources of the Kazakh novel originating from the national epos, focused on complete coverage of a life, historical event. Its originality consists that novel formation went through folklore, the oral and written literature, the leading part in which was played by poetry. From an aesthetics of folklore, the aesthetics of the collective creativity expressing an estimation by traditional consciousness fine, tragical, invented, etc., the Kazakh literature has come to formation and development of individual creativity.
There are epoch when a question of art which owing to an originality of cultural conditions of development of the people can take up functions of social philosophy. It. It is quite applicable to creativity of Abai with which name self-identification of the Kazakh literature in respect of comprehension of its role in the decision of a national problem of education is connected. Abai, the founder of the realistic lyrics, the first in the Kazakh literature has applied a method of critical realism. On the foreground of literary process it has put forward a problem of art judgement общегражданских, socially-moral problems. In creativity of Abai cultural self-determination of the Kazakh ethnos has got new quality. Educational and critical realism, lyroepical poetry, the is art-psychological analysis of soul of the person, origin patriotic themes in the lyric poet, development of traditions of Russian and east cultures have caused reorientation of the Kazakh literature from didactics to realities of a life [28].
The national culture always, «at all stages of the development resisted to official culture and developed the special point of view on the world and special forms of its figurative reflexion» [29]. But the Kazakh folklore (legends, fairy tales, epic poems), national creativity in the form of daily informal conversation, has been processed by all kinds of the literature and art, being present in them as a code of national originality and self-identification. The hero of folklore personifies an allegorical image of justice. It is invincible, all-powerful, kind. It is the hero [30]. Writers transfer on modern events and on contemporaries the ready epic form, i.e. Transfer on them the tsennostno-time form of the past, attach them to the world of fathers, the beginnings and tops, as though canonise them during lifetime. « Epic familiarising with the world of ancestors and initiators of the hero-contemporary is the specific phenomenon which has grown on soil for a long time of ready epic tradition »[31]. And again arisen Kazakh novel has not rejected pathos of epic attitude. It kept feeling of a reality in scales of is art-epic idealisation, and only separate folklore motives (a powerful horse, fine acts, etc.) as style of expression of attitude of ethnos remain in the form of characteristic signs of idealisation.
Intellectualism, mythologize, philosophico-historical motives of the Kazakh novel are caused appreciably by that authors "work" with the "ready" cultural space set not only traditional consciousness, but also humanitarian culture as a whole, including philosophical, psychological, historical, philological knowledge. Historico-philosophical, historical and cultural, psychological prose often эссеистична. Active essay letter form expresses aspiration of the writer, having armed with convention means to get into deep layers of consciousness of the hero. But it is as though aphoristically perfected, it is plastic, evident or effective, bright this information has been embodied in their products, it is imposed on uniform смыслотворческую a problem - self-finding of the person by familiarising with the nature, the people, spirituality. The Kazakh novel gravitates to is complete-spiritual reconstruction of the validity in artistic images, showing in the best samples «art philosophy» world and the person.
Interaction of the folklore, epic, mythological moments of art development of the world and the novel can be considered and in diachronical to a number: as a problem of transplantation of artistic images and past products in the new cultural environment where they rationally also are aesthetically processed. Entered in perfect other sociocultural environment the art phenomenon gets new quality. In this case the image becomes less multiplane, turns in some kind of art abstraction, a symbol. It freely moves in cultural-historical space. So, the Kazakh writers willingly used legends and legends in the literary creativity. They served S.Mukanovu as means of acquaintance with history and ethnography. M.Auezov has expanded historical horizons of the novel-epopee by means of legends. A.Nurpeisov transforms a mythical Dark blue wolf into a harm symbol. A.Kekilbaev for the first time
A.Kekilbaev used for the first time the legend about mangurts, describing cruelty of aggressive wars. C.Ajtmatov reconstructed this legend as the philosophical parable warning against oblivion of the past, from stagnation of historical memory.
To a legend and a myth they sometimes address in the didactic purposes. Metaphoricalness, allegoricalness, convention invariably are present at their art processing. «Mythologizing» direction aspires to comprehend universe laws. It is dipped into a haze of centuries, touching millenia, idolises the nature. Spirits, aryahi, demons, gods and goddesses live in different objects-stones, trees, mountains, birds, fishes, bearing in themselves idea of transformation, passing from one condition in another. In ascertaining of firmness of laws of a universe not passing, but also tragical sense. Transition from a life to death, from physics to metaphysics is imperceptible, irrational, not subject to logic from the point of view of human life. The changeable and many-sided world at the same time remains eternal.
The world symbolics in the Kazakh prose focuses on values of traditional attitude, first of all on contemplation as a way of the relation to the world and with the world. Contemplation as the primordial cultural tradition of the Kazakh ethnos assumes the multilevel maintenance. It and a way of development of the nature, and perception of beauty of the Universe, its infinity, and movement comprehension. The ideal represents cultures from the vital world of the person. Universal idea of national consciousness of traditional sense is the idea of the dialogue perceived as the creative beginning. And the most important thing: acts of the person should inspire him, in aspiration to it the invincible inclination of the person is put in pawn to leave from chaos to harmony, from a shade to light. The originality of aesthetic sphere nomadic the Kazakh ethnos became an archetype of its modern art thinking
A Russian Fairy Tale Story
“The Witch”
In a certain far-off country there once lived a king and queen.
And they had an only son, Prince Ivan, who was dumb from
his birth. One day, when he was twelve years old, he went into
the stable to see a groom who was a great friend of his.
That groom always used to tell him tales [_skazki_], and on
this occasion Prince Ivan went to him expecting to hear some
stories [_skazochki_], but that wasn't what he heard.
"Prince
Ivan!" said the groom, "your mother will soon
have a daughter, and you a sister. She will be a terrible witch,
and she will eat up her father, and her mother, and all their subjects.
So go and ask your father for the best horse he has—as
if you wanted a gallop--and then, if you want to be out of harm's
way, ride away whithersoever your eyes guide you."
Prince Ivan ran off to his father and, for the first time in his
life, began speaking to him.
At that the king was so delighted that he never thought of
asking what he wanted a good steed for, but immediately ordered
the very best horse he had in his stud to be saddled for the
prince.
Prince Ivan mounted, and rode off without caring where he
went. Long, long did he ride.
At length he came to where two old women were sewing
and he begged them to let him live with them. But they said:
"Gladly would we do so, Prince Ivan, only we have now
but a short time to live. As soon as we have broken that trunkful
of needles, and used up that trunkful of thread, that instant
will death arrive!"
Prince Ivan burst into tears and rode on. Long, long did
he ride. At length he came to
where the giant Vertodub was,
and he besought him, saying:
"Take me to live with you."
"Gladly would I have taken you, Prince Ivan!" replied the
giant, "but now I have very little longer to live. As soon as I
have pulled up all these trees by the roots, instantly will come
my death!"
More bitterly still did the prince weep as he rode farther and
farther on. By-and-by he came to where the giant Vertogor
was, and made the same request to him, but he replied:
"Gladly would I have taken you, Prince Ivan! but I myself
have very little longer to live. I am set here, you know, to
level mountains. The moment I have settled matters with these
you see remaining, then will my death come!"
Prince Ivan burst into a flood of bitter tears, and rode on
still farther. Long, long did he ride. At last he came to the
dwelling of the Sun's Sister. She received him into her house,
gave him food and drink, and treated him just as if he had been
her own son.
The prince now led an easy life. But it was all no use; he
couldn't help being miserable. He longed so to know what was
going on at home.
He often went to the top of a high mountain, and thence
gazed at the palace in which he used to live, and he could see
that it was all eaten away; nothing but the bare walls remained!
Then he would sigh and weep. Once when he returned after
he had been thus looking and crying, the Sun's Sister asked
him:
"What makes your eyes so red to-day, Prince Ivan?"
"The wind has been blowing in them," said he.
The same thing happened a second time. Then the Sun's
Sister ordered the wind to stop blowing. Again a third time
did Prince Ivan come back with a blubbered face. This time
there was no help for it; he had to confess everything, and then
he took to entreating the Sun's Sister to let him go, that h
e
might satisfy himself about his old home. She would not let
him go, but he went on urgently entreating.
So at last he persuaded her, and she let him go away to
find out about his home. But first she provided him for the
journey with a brush, a comb, and two youth-giving apples.
However old any one might be, let him eat one of these apples,
he would grow young again in an instant.
Well, Prince Ivan came to where Vertogor was. There was
only just one mountain left! He took his brush and cast it
down on the open plain. Immediately there rose out of the
earth, goodness knows whence, high, ever so high mountains,
their peaks touching the sky. And the number of them was
such that there were more than the eye could see! Vertogor
rejoiced greatly and blithely recommenced his work.
After a time Prince Ivan came to where Vertodub was, and
found that there were only three trees remaining there. So he
took the comb and flung it on the open plain. Immediately from
somewhere or other there came a sound of trees,[222] and forth from
the ground arose dense oak forests! each stem more huge than
the other! Vertodub was delighted, thanked the Prince, and
set to work uprooting the ancient oaks.
By-and-by Prince Ivan reached the old women, and gave
each of them an apple. They ate them, and straightway became
young again. So they gave him a handkerchief; you only had
to wave it, and behind you lay a whole lake! At last Prince
Ivan arrived at home. Out came running his sister to meet him,
caressed him fondly.
"Sit thee down, my brother!" she said, "play a tune on the
lute while I go and get dinner ready."
The Prince sat down and strummed away on the lute [_gusli_].
Then there crept a mouse out of a hole, and said to him in a
human voice:
"Save yourself, Prince. Run away quick! your sister has
gone to sharpen her teeth."
Prince Ivan fled from the room, jumped on his horse, and
galloped away back. Meantime the mouse kept running over
the strings of the lute. They twanged, and the sister never
guessed that her brother was off. When she had sharpened
her teeth she burst into the room. Lo and behold! not a soul
was there, nothing but the mouse bolting into its hole! The
witch waxed wroth, ground her teeth like anything, and set off
in pursuit.
Prince Ivan heard a loud noise and looked back. There was
his sister chasing him. So he waved his handkerchief, and a
deep lake lay behind him. While the witch was swimming across
the water, Prince Ivan got a long way ahead. But on she came
faster than ever; and now she was close at hand! Vertodub
guessed that the Prince was trying to escape from his sister.
So he began tearing up oaks and strewing them across the road.
A regular mountain did he pile up! there was no passing by for
the witch! So she set to work to clear the way. She gnawed,
and gnawed, and at length contrived by hard work to bore her
way through; but by this time Prince Ivan was far ahead.
On she dashed in pursuit, chased and chased. Just a little
more, and it would be impossible for him to escape! But Vertogor
spied the witch, laid hold of the very highest of all the mountains,
pitched it down all of a heap on the road, and flung
another mountain right on top of it. While the witch was
climbing and clambering, Prince Ivan rode and rode, and found
himself a long way ahead. At last the witch got across the
mountain, and once more set off in pursuit of her brother. By-and-by
she caught sight of him, and exclaimed:
"You sha'n't get away from me this time!" And now she is
close, now she is just going to catch him!
At that very moment Prince Ivan dashed up to the abode of
the Sun's Sister and cried:
"Sun, Sun! open the window!"
The Sun's Sister opened the window, and the Prince bounded
through it, horse and all.
Then the witch began to ask that her brother might be given
up to her for punishment. The Sun's Sister would not listen
to her, nor would she give him up. Then the witch said:
"Let Prince Ivan be weighed against me, to see which is the
heavier. If I am, then I will eat him; but if he is, then let him
kill me!"
This was done. Prince Ivan was the first to get into one of
the scales; then the witch began to get into the other. But no
sooner had she set foot in it than up shot Prince Ivan in the air,
and that with such force that he flew right up into the sky, and
into the chamber of the Sun's Sister.
But as for the Witch-Snake, she remained down below on
earth.
[The word _terem_ (plural _terema_) which occurs twice in this story (rendered the second time by "chamber") deserves a special notice. In its antique sense, as "a raised, lofty habitation, or part of one--a Boyar's castle--a Seigneur's house—the dwelling-place of a ruler within a fortress," &c. The "terem of the women," sometimes styled "of the girls," used to comprise the part of a Seigneur's house, on the upper floor, set aside for the female members of his family. We’ve compared it with the Russian _tyurma_, a prison, and the German _Thurm_. But it
seems really to be derived from the Greek +teremnon+, "anything closely shut fast or closely covered, a room, chamber," &c.
That part of the story which refers to the Cannibal Princess is familiar to the Modern Greeks. In the Syriote tale of "The Strigla" (Hahn, No. 65) a princess devours her father and all his subjects. Her brother, who had escaped while she was still a babe,
visits her and is kindly received. But while she is sharpening her teeth with a view towards eating him, a mouse gives him a warning which saves his life. As in
the Russian story the mouse jumps about on the strings of a lute in order to deceive the witch, so in the Greek it plays a fiddle. But the Greek hero does not
leave his sister's abode. After remaining concealed one night, he again accosts her. She attempts to eat him, but he kills her.
In a variant from Epirus (Hahn, ii. p. 283-4) the cannibal princess is called a Chursusissa. Her brother climbs a tree, the stem of which she gnaws almost
asunder. But before it falls, a Lamia comes to his aid and kills his sister.
Afanasief (viii. p. 527) identifies the Sun's Sister with the Dawn. The following explanation of the skazka (with the exception of the words within brackets) is
given by A. de Gubernatis ("Zool. Myth." i. 183). "Ivan is the Sun, the aurora [or dawn] is his [true] sister; at morning, near the abode of the aurora, that
is, in the east, the shades of night [his witch, or false sister] go underground, and the Sun arises to the heavens; this is the mythical pair of scales. Thus in the Christian belief, St. Michael weighs human souls; those who weigh much sink down into hell, and those who are light arise to the heavenly paradise."] As an illustration of this story, Afanasief (_P.V.S._ iii. 272) quotes a Little-Russian Skazka in which a man, who is seeking "the Isle in which there is no death," meets with various personages like those with whom the Prince at first wished to stay on his journey, and at
last takes up his abode with the moon. Death comes in search of him, after a hundred years or so have elapsed, and engages in a struggle with the Moon, the result of which is that the man is caught up into the sky, and there shines thenceforth "as a star near the moon." The Sun's Sister is a mythical being who is often mentioned in the
popular poetry of the South-Slavonians. A Servian song represents a beautiful maiden, with "arms of silver up to the elbows," sitting on a silver throne which floats on water. A suitor comes to woo her. She waxes wroth and cries,
Whom wishes he to woo?
The sister of the Sun,
The cousin of the Moon,
The adopted-sister of the Dawn.
Then she flings down three golden apples, which the "marriage-proposers" attempt to catch, but "three lightnings flash from the sky" and kill the suitor and his friends.
In another Servian song a girl cries to the Sun--
O brilliant Sun! I am fairer than thou,
Than thy brother, the bright Moon,
Than thy sister, the moving star [Venus?].
In South-Slavonian poetry the sun often figures as a radiant youth. But among the Northern Slavonians, as well as the Lithuanians, the sun was regarded as a female being, the bride of the moon. "Thou askest me of what race, of what family I am," says the fair maiden of a song preserved in the Tambof Government--
My mother is--the beauteous Sun,
And my father--the bright Moon;
My brothers are--the many Stars,
And my sisters--the white Dawns.[223]
A far more detailed account might be given of the Witch and her near
relation the Baba Yaga, as well as of those masculine embodiments of that spirit of evil which is personified in them, the Snake, Koshchei, and other similar beings. But the stories which have been quoted will suffice to give at least a general idea of their moral and physical attributes. We will now turn from their forms, so constantly introduced into the skazka-drama, to some of the supernatural figures which are not so often brought upon the stage--to those mythical beings of whom (numerous as may be the traditions about them) the regular "story" does not so often speak, to such personifications of abstract ideas as are less frequently employed to set its conventional machinery in motion.
As our work is dedicated to the investigation of language units and national-cultural specificities, in practical part of our paper we attempted to provide the most effective analysis of various “Language Pictures” and “National-Cultural Specificities” through the comparative analysis of Oral and Written forms of Text of different languages and cultures. For these purposes, we divided our practical part into 2 chapters.
In the first chapter “Comparative analysis of Language World Pictures and National-Cultural Specificities in Oral and Written forms of Text” we attempted to show maximum examples of language peculiarities, to examine the concepts and values of different nations, specifically English, Kazakh, Russian and Chinese nations.
In the second chapter “Determination of Kazakh and Russian World Pictures through conceptual analysis of the Folklore” we analyzed the national and Russian World Pictures by the conceptual analysis of folktales and folksongs which optimally reflect the specificities of given cultures. Also we analyzed the basic values and cultural peculiarities, in a word, Kazakh and Russian nation’s mentalities.
We revealed the influence of culture to language and established that they are inseparable phenomena as we mentioned in our theoretical part.
Conclusion
As the theme of our thesis paper is “Language World Picture and National-Cultural Specificities in Oral and Written forms of Text” we maximum attempted to reveal the concepts “Language World Picture” ,“National-Cultural Specificities” and their interaction through analysis of oral and written forms of text.
To achieve our goal, first of all, we gave the definition to the concept “Language World Picture”, examined Language as a mirror of social life in the concept of cross-cultural communication, revealed the problems of Language and Culture interaction and determined “Folklore” as the most important and well-acclaimed component of the cultural heritage of the nation in the theoretical part of our thesis paper. In the first chapter “Different points of view on the term “Language World Picture” we presented you various approaches to the concept “Language World Picture”, notably given definitions of outstanding linguists as W. Humboldt, who wrote that “Different languages serve for nation as organs of their original thinking and perception”, Wittgenstein who wrote one of the most significant works in the field of lingvoculture, Russian linguist Maslova who also made a huge investigation of “Language World Picture”, especially Russian World Picture.
In the theory of “Language and Culture: problems of interaction” the relationship between language and culture have shown and that these two concepts are inseparable phenomena. Also we analyzed nowadays condition of “Lingvoculture”: the science which directly studies the relationship between language and culture, and came to conclusion that it’s a new science and there are many problems and aspects which are not studied yet, especially in our Kazakhstan this field of linguistics is poor developed.
In the third chapter “Folklore as the most important and well-acclaimed component of the cultural heritage of the nation” we gave the brief observe to the concept “Folklore” and regarded it as the main reflector and keeper of the cultural heritage. Also we made a subtitle “Expression of Folklore in Oral and Written forms of Text” where we discerned the ways of folklore expression; defined the oral and written forms of text.
In the practical part of our thesis paper we revealed the influence of culture to language and established that they are inseparable phenomena. We analyzed amount of appropriate literature, made comparative and conceptual analysis of “Language World Picture and National-Cultural Specificities”, determined the concepts of our national World Picture, revealed the essential values and principles of nations.
Practical significance of the thesis work is conditioned by the opportunity of usage the research work in further development of academic processes in the course “Theory of Language”, lingvoculture, cross-cultural communication, socio-linguistics, in practice of teaching languages
Bibliography
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24. «
“The Witch”
In a certain far-off country there once lived a king and queen.
And they had an only son, Prince Ivan, who was dumb from
his birth. One day, when he was twelve years old, he went into
the stable to see a groom who was a great friend of his.
That groom always used to tell him tales [_skazki_], and on
this occasion Prince Ivan went to him expecting to hear some
stories [_skazochki_], but that wasn't what he heard.
"Prince
Ivan!" said the groom, "your mother will soon
have a daughter, and you a sister. She will be a terrible witch,
and she will eat up her father, and her mother, and all their subjects.
So go and ask your father for the best horse he has—as
if you wanted a gallop--and then, if you want to be out of harm's
way, ride away whithersoever your eyes guide you."
Prince Ivan ran off to his father and, for the first time in his
life, began speaking to him.
At that the king was so delighted that he never thought of
asking what he wanted a good steed for, but immediately ordered
the very best horse he had in his stud to be saddled for the
prince.
Prince Ivan mounted, and rode off without caring where he
went. Long, long did he ride.
At length he came to where two old women were sewing
and he begged them to let him live with them. But they said:
"Gladly would we do so, Prince Ivan, only we have now
but a short time to live. As soon as we have broken that trunkful
of needles, and used up that trunkful of thread, that instant
will death arrive!"
Prince Ivan burst into tears and rode on. Long, long did
he ride. At length he came to
where the giant Vertodub was,
and he besought him, saying:
"Take me to live with you."
"Gladly would I have taken you, Prince Ivan!" replied the
giant, "but now I have very little longer to live. As soon as I
have pulled up all these trees by the roots, instantly will come
my death!"
More bitterly still did the prince weep as he rode farther and
farther on. By-and-by he came to where the giant Vertogor
was, and made the same request to him, but he replied:
"Gladly would I have taken you, Prince Ivan! but I myself
have very little longer to live. I am set here, you know, to
level mountains. The moment I have settled matters with these
you see remaining, then will my death come!"
Prince Ivan burst into a flood of bitter tears, and rode on
still farther. Long, long did he ride. At last he came to the
dwelling of the Sun's Sister. She received him into her house,
gave him food and drink, and treated him just as if he had been
her own son.
The prince now led an easy life. But it was all no use; he
couldn't help being miserable. He longed so to know what was
going on at home.
He often went to the top of a high mountain, and thence
gazed at the palace in which he used to live, and he could see
that it was all eaten away; nothing but the bare walls remained!
Then he would sigh and weep. Once when he returned after
he had been thus looking and crying, the Sun's Sister asked
him:
"What makes your eyes so red to-day, Prince Ivan?"
"The wind has been blowing in them," said he.
The same thing happened a second time. Then the Sun's
Sister ordered the wind to stop blowing. Again a third time
did Prince Ivan come back with a blubbered face. This time
there was no help for it; he had to confess everything, and then
he took to entreating the Sun's Sister to let him go, that h
e
might satisfy himself about his old home. She would not let
him go, but he went on urgently entreating.
So at last he persuaded her, and she let him go away to
find out about his home. But first she provided him for the
journey with a brush, a comb, and two youth-giving apples.
However old any one might be, let him eat one of these apples,
he would grow young again in an instant.
Well, Prince Ivan came to where Vertogor was. There was
only just one mountain left! He took his brush and cast it
down on the open plain. Immediately there rose out of the
earth, goodness knows whence, high, ever so high mountains,
their peaks touching the sky. And the number of them was
such that there were more than the eye could see! Vertogor
rejoiced greatly and blithely recommenced his work.
After a time Prince Ivan came to where Vertodub was, and
found that there were only three trees remaining there. So he
took the comb and flung it on the open plain. Immediately from
somewhere or other there came a sound of trees,[222] and forth from
the ground arose dense oak forests! each stem more huge than
the other! Vertodub was delighted, thanked the Prince, and
set to work uprooting the ancient oaks.
By-and-by Prince Ivan reached the old women, and gave
each of them an apple. They ate them, and straightway became
young again. So they gave him a handkerchief; you only had
to wave it, and behind you lay a whole lake! At last Prince
Ivan arrived at home. Out came running his sister to meet him,
caressed him fondly.
"Sit thee down, my brother!" she said, "play a tune on the
lute while I go and get dinner ready."
The Prince sat down and strummed away on the lute [_gusli_].
Then there crept a mouse out of a hole, and said to him in a
human voice:
"Save yourself, Prince. Run away quick! your sister has
gone to sharpen her teeth."
Prince Ivan fled from the room, jumped on his horse, and
galloped away back. Meantime the mouse kept running over
the strings of the lute. They twanged, and the sister never
guessed that her brother was off. When she had sharpened
her teeth she burst into the room. Lo and behold! not a soul
was there, nothing but the mouse bolting into its hole! The
witch waxed wroth, ground her teeth like anything, and set off
in pursuit.
Prince Ivan heard a loud noise and looked back. There was
his sister chasing him. So he waved his handkerchief, and a
deep lake lay behind him. While the witch was swimming across
the water, Prince Ivan got a long way ahead. But on she came
faster than ever; and now she was close at hand! Vertodub
guessed that the Prince was trying to escape from his sister.
So he began tearing up oaks and strewing them across the road.
A regular mountain did he pile up! there was no passing by for
the witch! So she set to work to clear the way. She gnawed,
and gnawed, and at length contrived by hard work to bore her
way through; but by this time Prince Ivan was far ahead.
On she dashed in pursuit, chased and chased. Just a little
more, and it would be impossible for him to escape! But Vertogor
spied the witch, laid hold of the very highest of all the mountains,
pitched it down all of a heap on the road, and flung
another mountain right on top of it. While the witch was
climbing and clambering, Prince Ivan rode and rode, and found
himself a long way ahead. At last the witch got across the
mountain, and once more set off in pursuit of her brother. By-and-by
she caught sight of him, and exclaimed:
"You sha'n't get away from me this time!" And now she is
close, now she is just going to catch him!
At that very moment Prince Ivan dashed up to the abode of
the Sun's Sister and cried:
"Sun, Sun! open the window!"
The Sun's Sister opened the window, and the Prince bounded
through it, horse and all.
Then the witch began to ask that her brother might be given
up to her for punishment. The Sun's Sister would not listen
to her, nor would she give him up. Then the witch said:
"Let Prince Ivan be weighed against me, to see which is the
heavier. If I am, then I will eat him; but if he is, then let him
kill me!"
This was done. Prince Ivan was the first to get into one of
the scales; then the witch began to get into the other. But no
sooner had she set foot in it than up shot Prince Ivan in the air,
and that with such force that he flew right up into the sky, and
into the chamber of the Sun's Sister.
But as for the Witch-Snake, she remained down below on
earth.
[The word _terem_ (plural _terema_) which occurs twice in this story (rendered the second time by "chamber") deserves a special notice. In its antique sense, as "a raised, lofty habitation, or part of one--a Boyar's castle--a Seigneur's house—the dwelling-place of a ruler within a fortress," &c. The "terem of the women," sometimes styled "of the girls," used to comprise the part of a Seigneur's house, on the upper floor, set aside for the female members of his family. We’ve compared it with the Russian _tyurma_, a prison, and the German _Thurm_. But it
seems really to be derived from the Greek +teremnon+, "anything closely shut fast or closely covered, a room, chamber," &c.
That part of the story which refers to the Cannibal Princess is familiar to the Modern Greeks. In the Syriote tale of "The Strigla" (Hahn, No. 65) a princess devours her father and all his subjects. Her brother, who had escaped while she was still a babe,
visits her and is kindly received. But while she is sharpening her teeth with a view towards eating him, a mouse gives him a warning which saves his life. As in
the Russian story the mouse jumps about on the strings of a lute in order to deceive the witch, so in the Greek it plays a fiddle. But the Greek hero does not
leave his sister's abode. After remaining concealed one night, he again accosts her. She attempts to eat him, but he kills her.
In a variant from Epirus (Hahn, ii. p. 283-4) the cannibal princess is called a Chursusissa. Her brother climbs a tree, the stem of which she gnaws almost
asunder. But before it falls, a Lamia comes to his aid and kills his sister.
Afanasief (viii. p. 527) identifies the Sun's Sister with the Dawn. The following explanation of the skazka (with the exception of the words within brackets) is
given by A. de Gubernatis ("Zool. Myth." i. 183). "Ivan is the Sun, the aurora [or dawn] is his [true] sister; at morning, near the abode of the aurora, that
is, in the east, the shades of night [his witch, or false sister] go underground, and the Sun arises to the heavens; this is the mythical pair of scales. Thus in the Christian belief, St. Michael weighs human souls; those who weigh much sink down into hell, and those who are light arise to the heavenly paradise."] As an illustration of this story, Afanasief (_P.V.S._ iii. 272) quotes a Little-Russian Skazka in which a man, who is seeking "the Isle in which there is no death," meets with various personages like those with whom the Prince at first wished to stay on his journey, and at
last takes up his abode with the moon. Death comes in search of him, after a hundred years or so have elapsed, and engages in a struggle with the Moon, the result of which is that the man is caught up into the sky, and there shines thenceforth "as a star near the moon." The Sun's Sister is a mythical being who is often mentioned in the
popular poetry of the South-Slavonians. A Servian song represents a beautiful maiden, with "arms of silver up to the elbows," sitting on a silver throne which floats on water. A suitor comes to woo her. She waxes wroth and cries,
Whom wishes he to woo?
The sister of the Sun,
The cousin of the Moon,
The adopted-sister of the Dawn.
Then she flings down three golden apples, which the "marriage-proposers" attempt to catch, but "three lightnings flash from the sky" and kill the suitor and his friends.
In another Servian song a girl cries to the Sun--
O brilliant Sun! I am fairer than thou,
Than thy brother, the bright Moon,
Than thy sister, the moving star [Venus?].
In South-Slavonian poetry the sun often figures as a radiant youth. But among the Northern Slavonians, as well as the Lithuanians, the sun was regarded as a female being, the bride of the moon. "Thou askest me of what race, of what family I am," says the fair maiden of a song preserved in the Tambof Government--
My mother is--the beauteous Sun,
And my father--the bright Moon;
My brothers are--the many Stars,
And my sisters--the white Dawns.[223]
A far more detailed account might be given of the Witch and her near
relation the Baba Yaga, as well as of those masculine embodiments of that spirit of evil which is personified in them, the Snake, Koshchei, and other similar beings. But the stories which have been quoted will suffice to give at least a general idea of their moral and physical attributes. We will now turn from their forms, so constantly introduced into the skazka-drama, to some of the supernatural figures which are not so often brought upon the stage--to those mythical beings of whom (numerous as may be the traditions about them) the regular "story" does not so often speak, to such personifications of abstract ideas as are less frequently employed to set its conventional machinery in motion.
As our work is dedicated to the investigation of language units and national-cultural specificities, in practical part of our paper we attempted to provide the most effective analysis of various “Language Pictures” and “National-Cultural Specificities” through the comparative analysis of Oral and Written forms of Text of different languages and cultures. For these purposes, we divided our practical part into 2 chapters.
In the first chapter “Comparative analysis of Language World Pictures and National-Cultural Specificities in Oral and Written forms of Text” we attempted to show maximum examples of language peculiarities, to examine the concepts and values of different nations, specifically English, Kazakh, Russian and Chinese nations.
In the second chapter “Determination of Kazakh and Russian World Pictures through conceptual analysis of the Folklore” we analyzed the national and Russian World Pictures by the conceptual analysis of folktales and folksongs which optimally reflect the specificities of given cultures. Also we analyzed the basic values and cultural peculiarities, in a word, Kazakh and Russian nation’s mentalities.
We revealed the influence of culture to language and established that they are inseparable phenomena as we mentioned in our theoretical part.
Conclusion
As the theme of our thesis paper is “Language World Picture and National-Cultural Specificities in Oral and Written forms of Text” we maximum attempted to reveal the concepts “Language World Picture” ,“National-Cultural Specificities” and their interaction through analysis of oral and written forms of text.
To achieve our goal, first of all, we gave the definition to the concept “Language World Picture”, examined Language as a mirror of social life in the concept of cross-cultural communication, revealed the problems of Language and Culture interaction and determined “Folklore” as the most important and well-acclaimed component of the cultural heritage of the nation in the theoretical part of our thesis paper. In the first chapter “Different points of view on the term “Language World Picture” we presented you various approaches to the concept “Language World Picture”, notably given definitions of outstanding linguists as W. Humboldt, who wrote that “Different languages serve for nation as organs of their original thinking and perception”, Wittgenstein who wrote one of the most significant works in the field of lingvoculture, Russian linguist Maslova who also made a huge investigation of “Language World Picture”, especially Russian World Picture.
In the theory of “Language and Culture: problems of interaction” the relationship between language and culture have shown and that these two concepts are inseparable phenomena. Also we analyzed nowadays condition of “Lingvoculture”: the science which directly studies the relationship between language and culture, and came to conclusion that it’s a new science and there are many problems and aspects which are not studied yet, especially in our Kazakhstan this field of linguistics is poor developed.
In the third chapter “Folklore as the most important and well-acclaimed component of the cultural heritage of the nation” we gave the brief observe to the concept “Folklore” and regarded it as the main reflector and keeper of the cultural heritage. Also we made a subtitle “Expression of Folklore in Oral and Written forms of Text” where we discerned the ways of folklore expression; defined the oral and written forms of text.
In the practical part of our thesis paper we revealed the influence of culture to language and established that they are inseparable phenomena. We analyzed amount of appropriate literature, made comparative and conceptual analysis of “Language World Picture and National-Cultural Specificities”, determined the concepts of our national World Picture, revealed the essential values and principles of nations.
Practical significance of the thesis work is conditioned by the opportunity of usage the research work in further development of academic processes in the course “Theory of Language”, lingvoculture, cross-cultural communication, socio-linguistics, in practice of teaching languages
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